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The rise of suicide verdicts in south-east England, 1530–1590: the legal process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

S. J. Stevenson
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Continuity and Change , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , May 1987 , pp. 37 - 75
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Kingsley, Amis, Lucky Jim: a novel (London, 1953), 231.Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Braudel, F., Capitalism and material life (London, 1973), xGoogle Scholar; Laslett, P., The world we have lost, 2nd ed. (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Eric, Lampard, ‘The urbanizing world’, in Dyos, H. J. and Wolff, M. eds, The Victorian city, 1 (London, 1973), 3–58Google Scholar; Thomas, K. V., Religion and the decline of magic (London, 1971), 3–21.Google Scholar

3 Philippe, Aries, Centuries of childhood (Harmondsworth, 1973), 353–91Google Scholar; Stone, L., The family, sex and marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Shorter, E., The making of the modern family (London, 1976)Google Scholar; and Thompson's, E. P. scathing attack on the trend in ‘Happy families’, New Society, 8 09 1977, 499–501.Google Scholar

4 Thomas, , Religion and the decline of magic, 205–6.Google Scholar

5 Hoskins, W. G., The age of plunder: King Henry's England, 1500–1547 (London, 1976), 47–51.Google Scholar

6 For recent statements, see Thomas, , Religion and the decline of magic, 87Google Scholar; and Larner, C., ‘Crimen excepturn?-witchcraft in Europe’, in Gatrell, V. A. C., Lenman, B. and Parker, G. eds., Crime and the law; the social history of crime in western Europe since 1500 (London, 1980), 73.Google Scholar

7 The official average suicide-rate in England and Wales for the decade 1861–70 stood at c. 6.5 per 100,000, that for 1931–40 at c. 13.0 per 100,000. For a critique of the Registrar General's figures, see Hair, P. E. H., ‘Deaths from violence in Britain: a tentative secular survey’, Population Studies 35 (1971), 15, note 55Google Scholar; and Anderson, O., ‘Did suicide increase with industrialization in Victorian England?’, Past and Present 86, (1980), 149–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

8 A corollary of this belief- the hypothesis of the interchangeability of the resolutions of social tension - has also been lent some support by Barbara, Westman, in an essay on ‘The peasant family and crime in England’, Journal of British Studies 13, No. 2. (1974).Google Scholar For psychiatric views on this subject, see Stenghel, E., Suicide and attempted suicide (Harmondsworth, 1973), 28Google Scholar; and the cross-cultural differences observed by Wolfgang, M. E. in ‘Suicide by means of victim-precipitated homicide’, in Resnik, H. L. P. ed., Suicidal behaviours (New York, 1968).Google Scholar

9 Post, J. B., ‘Criminals and the law in the reign of Richard II: with special reference to Hampshire’ (unpublished Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1977), 218, 224.Google Scholar A similar view appears in Hunnisett, R. F., The medieval coroner (Cambridge, 1961), 20–1Google Scholar, and it is an argument implicit also in Sprott, S. E., The English debate on suicide from Donne to Hume (Illinois, 1961).Google Scholar

10 Szasz, T., The manufacture of madness (London, 1971), 33–34.Google Scholar

11 Hair, , ‘Death from violence in Britain‘, 15.Google Scholar

12 Hair, , ‘A note on the incidence of Tudor suicide’, Local Population Studies 5 (1970), 40–1.Google Scholar

13 Laslett, , The world we have lost, 145.Google Scholar

15 Sainsbury, P., Progress report of the Medical Research Council clinical psychiatry unit, 1968–1972 (Chichester, 1972): ‘… epidemiological methods are used to identify the attributes of the suicide-prone…Suicide is well-suited to this approach because reporting is statutory, consequently the characteristics of consecutive cases can be compared with those reported in the Census, or with samples from the general population.’Google Scholar

16 See Mme. de Staël[-Holstein], , ‘Reflexions sur le suicide’ (1813), in Oeuvres complètes, 3 (Paris, 1820), 241–309Google Scholar; Quetelet, L. A. J., (ed. by Solomon, Diamond), A Treatise on man and the development of his faculties (Florida, 1969), v, x and 80–2Google Scholar; and Durkheim, E. (ed. by Spaulding, J. A. and Simpson, G.), Suicide: a study in Sociology (London, 1952), 299Google Scholar:‘At any given moment the moral constitution of society establishes the contingent of voluntary deaths. There is, therefore, for each people a collective force of a definite amount of energy, impelling man to self-destruction. The victim's acts, which at first seem to express only his personal temperament, are really the supplement and prolongation of a social condition which they express externally.’

17 See Lucien, Febvre, ‘Vers une autre histoire’ (1949), reprinted in his Combats pour l'histoire (Paris, 1953), 424–26.Google Scholar

18 Joan, Thirsk, ‘Introduction’, in Thirsk, J. ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 4 (Cambridge, 1967), 4–15.Google Scholar See Stevenson, S. J., ‘Social and economic contributions to the pattern of ‘suicide’ in south-east England, 1530–1590’, Continuity and Change 2, 2, Section III.Google Scholar

19 ibid., Section I.

20 ibid., Section II.

21 i.e. Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Middlesex was also initially included but slight survival of records forced its abandonment. The bulk of the material gathered for this study derived principally from the record of 1,329 coroners' inquests drawn up in the years 1560–89, in the King's Bench ‘ancient’ indictments (Public Record Office series K.B. 9: Table 2 above) and those surviving in the Middlesex Sessions Records, (Middlesex County Record Office, series MJ/SR), eight in number. All these consisted of 558 verdicts of accidental drowning and 779 verdicts of suicide distributed by selected counties and decades, as shown in Table 1. A further 57 cases, from the same sources, have been considered for the year of dearth 1556, together with some 35 inquests from the City of London, for the year 1590 (Corporation of London Records Office, Document 240A). For the latter, see Forbes, T. R., ‘London coroners' inquests for 1590’, in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 28 (1973), 376–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 John, Strype, Ecclesiastical memorials relating chiefly to religion and the reformation of it …(Oxford, 1822), 3, 554–6Google Scholar; and Jordan, W. K., Edward VI: the threshold of power. The dominance of the Duke of Cumberland (London, 1970), 270–5, 327–34.Google Scholar

23 P.R.O., K.B. 9 files, 384, 385, 386, 387.

24 ‘Homicide’, rather than murder, because distinctions between premeditated murder, manslaughter and self-defence occasionally formed part of the marginal notes on inquests: ‘se defendendo’, on two cases from Suffolk (K.B. 9, 544/115 and 116); ‘ex infortuno et murdrum [sic]… non est felonice’, in a case from Sussex in 1540 (K.B. 9. 545/16).

25 K.B. 9/466, 467, 469, 966, 545, 547, 1,003.

26 K.B. 9/610, 611,612, 613.

27 In 1461 one of the Norfolk coroners had, himself, been the object of murder. Gairdner, J. ed., The Fasten letters, 3 (London, 1904), 288–9Google Scholar, cited in Loades, D. M., Politics and the nation (Brighton, 1974), 66.Google Scholar Assaults were clearly common throughout earlier centuries: Hunnisett, , The medieval coroner, 128–9.Google Scholar

28 Prof. Hair, suggested (‘A note on the incidence of Tudor suicide’, 37–8)Google Scholar that, in calculations of suicide as a percentage of violent deaths, homicides should be discounted. Such a procedure would, in fact, yield a more nearly constant proportion of ‘suicide’ in those counties and at those three dates we have been considering: one-fifth in 1514/15, one third in 1539/40 and one quarter in 1564/5.1 do not, however, necessarily agree that homicide should be discounted.

29 3 Hen. VII, c. 2, cited in Hunnisett, R. F. ed., Calendar of Nottinghamshire coroners' inquests, 1485–1558, Thoroton Society Record Series, xxv, xviii.Google Scholar See also Forbes, T. R., Chronicle from Aldgate (Yale, 1971), 137–8.Google Scholar

30 1 Hen. VIII, c. 7: Hunnisett, , Nottinghamshire…inquests, xviii.Google Scholar

31 The rate at which population was increasing in relation to a nearly constant number of coroners would be sufficient to account for this regressive tendency and it might be argued that a document in the State Papers Domestic of June 1575 listing the coroners operating in each county and formally defining their areas of responsibility for the first time, was part of an attempt to state and strengthen the performance of their duties. P.R.O., S.P. 12/104: ‘The Report of the Allotments of Justices of the Peace, etc., with their several divisions in divers shires, distinguishing the divisions and limits of each shire, the names of resident Justices of the Peace, and of Coroners and Clerks of the Peace within the same.’ Those who would wish to relate coroners' spheres of activity more closely to their places of abode will find such supposed places of residence listed for the counties of Devon, Cornwall, Hereford, Leicester, Nottingham, Pembroke, Rutland and Warwick.

32 Heal, F., Of prelates and princes: a study of the economic and social position of the Tudor episcopate (Cambridge, 1980), 278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a brief account of the functions of the royal almoners, see the American Bar Foundation's Index to the Proceedings in star chamber for the reign of James 1,1603 to 1625, in the Public Record Office, London, 1, 32.Google Scholar

33 Cockburn, J. S., ‘Early modern assize records as historical evidence’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 5 (1975), 215–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 For the precise figures, see note 23, above.

35 Meekings, C. A. F., ‘King's Bench Files’, 98, n. 3Google Scholar; one such file, preserved in its original condition, is that for Trinity 1552 (P.R.O., K.B. 9/982).

36 One could calculate the exact number of inquests missing by conducting a comparison with entries on the controlment rolls. P.R.O. series K.B. 29. The weakness of the controlment rolls as an alternative source is that they only provide a list of names, by verdict. They are useful for their intended purpose of cross-checking documents, and they can provide a crude numerical picture of countrywide activity, by circuit, but the subtle nuances of the inquests themselves, the dates, times, places, additions, names of coroners, witnesses and circumstances are, of course, all missing.

37 The known surviving files for each term in this period are listed in Table 2.

38 Such is the case for Middlesex throughout our period; Sussex in the years 1561–6, 1568, 1575 and 1586; Kent in the year 1566; Cambridgeshire in the years 1560, 1562, 1570, 1575, 1577, 1582 and 1585; Surrey in the years 1565–6 and 1569–70; Hertfordshire in the years 1561 and 1569–70; Norfolk in the years 1577 and 1585–8; Suffolk in the years 1561, 1566, 1575, 1577, and 1585; Essex in the years 1560–1, 1565 and 1585. All years cited are inclusive. Details are shown on Table 3.

39 Hunnisett, , Medieval coroner, 116.Google Scholar Some errors result upon a failure to note such gaps in the legal record are discussed in my letter to Local Population Studies. 15, (1975) 47.Google Scholar

40 Cockburn, ‘Early modern assize records as historical evidence’.

41 That the ‘carrot’ was perhaps becoming more effective than the ‘stick’ seems to be indicated by the fact that gentlemen were now tending to pass on the office of coroner within the family - as happened among the Chamberleyns in Norfolk or the Cookes in Hertfordshire. Cf. Hunnisett, , Medieval coroner, 150–1.Google Scholar

42 For the seasonal pattern of the late-nineteenth century see Ogle, W.,‘Suicides in England and Wales in relation to age, sex, season and occupation’, Journal of the Statistical Society, 49, (1886), 117Google Scholar, and effingwell, A., Illegitimacy and the influence of the seasons upon conduct: two studies in demography (London, 1892), 95–6.Google Scholar

43 Figure 3.

44 Goad, J.. A stro-Meteorologica… (London, 1686), 506–7Google Scholar, cited in Thomas, K. V., Religion and the decline of magic, 327.Google Scholar

45 Cockburn, J. S., ‘Early modern assize records’, 226.Google Scholar

46 On the subject of ‘return days’ and their timing, see Plucknett, T. F. T., ‘Legal chronology’, in Cheney, C. R. ed., Handbook of dates for students of English history (London, 1970), 67–8.Google Scholar

47 See the explanation immediately preceding and succeeding note 37 in the text above.

48 Namely 1562, 1564, 1565, 1567, 1568, 1572, 1578, 1579, 1580, 1581, 1582, 1584, 1587 and 1589. All years are taken to start on the 1st of January unless described as ‘legal’ or ‘harvest’ years.

49 See Figures 3 and 4.

50 J. Goad, Astro-Meteorologica. Intellectual conditions prevailing in the sixteenth century did not, of course, as yet allow of the quantitative study of social phenomena which we find in mid- and late seventeenth century; cf. Yates, F. A., The Rosicrucian enlightenment (London, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Webster, C., The great instauration; science, medicine and reform, 1626–1660 (London, 1975)Google ScholarWestman, R. S. and McGuire, J. E., Hermeticism and the scientific revolution, (Los Angeles, 1977), passim.Google Scholar

51 n = 41 and 44 cases respectively.

52 n = 43 and 54 cases respectively.

53 See Figure 4.

54 The fact that the bulk of agricultural tasks fell in the period from the 24th of June to the 24th of December seriously affected the time that society could spare for other activities, - including, we must presume, the administrative ones. This has been demonstrated by Charles Phythian-Adams in his essay ‘Ceremony and the citizen; the communal year at Coventry, 1450 to 1550’, in Clark, P. and Slack, P. eds., Crisis and order in English towns (London, 1973), 78–9.Google Scholar

55 P.R.O., STAC 5/A.3/34,‘… the said Wylliam Hall having no authoritie to execute the office of a Coroner…’. It was clearly pointed out for Leggat's benefit that‘… according unto a statute made in the ffyrste yeare of the reigne of our late Sovereign Lord… King Henry the eight, yor late Rather…’ [addressing the Crown], he ‘… shoulde have repaired and come thyther in his own person to chardge a Jurye to enquyer and present howe and by what means the said Henry Shrympling and Adam Elgare came to their deathes…’ Clear statements of the coroner's duties in this period were not handily available until the appearance of John Wilkinson's Treatise collected out of the statutes of this kingdom… concerning the office and authorities of coroners and sherifes, in 1628.

56 Hunnisett, , Nottinghamshire Inquests, xiii.Google Scholar

57 Vigour is generally found opposed to administrative reciprocity. Where coroners were vigorous - as applied in the 1570s, for example, to William Playfere (Sussex), Thomas Andrews (Suffolk), William Vernon and Thomas Knott (Essex) - they appear extremely inflexible about holding inquests beyond the boundaries of their apparent areas of responsibility. Less active men - William Webb (Kent) or Francis Aymonde and Magnus Fowle (in Sussex) - appear, by contrast, to have undertaken substantial duties beyond their geographical brief. In Sussex, for example, we find Thomas Welsh's desultory work (exemplified in K.B. 9, 652/336) mitigated by Fowle's activity in Pevensey, though Fowle was primarily responsible "or the Rape of Lewes. In 1537 John Kene, the coroner operating in N. E. Suffolk, obliged by holding an inquest in Norfolk (K.B. 9, 636/149); the previous year we find Thomas Knott acting on behalf of the Duchy of Lancaster, within his own area, though he was not one of the Duchy's appointed deputies (Cf. K.B. 9, 588/217 and 635/301). Some probably had a distaste for the job and though there are few significant differences between ‘clear-up’ rates in surviving inquests for either deaths eventually determined suicide and accident or as occurring in months with or without return days, it is probable that John Kene, in Suffolk, could be assessed as demonstrating a reluctance to deal with cases initially reported to him as suicides. He dealt far more promptly with cases of accidental drowning and with far more such cases relative to other men – while, we must presume, his fellow coroners dealt with many of those suicides he was reluctant to investigate. (But compare the ‘Ratio of A to S’ for Suffolk, in Table 1 above). A similar pattern appears with Edward Chamberleyn's work in Norfolk. See also note 74, below.

58 See notes to Figure 6.

59 Use of letters, as opposed to numbers, indicates that those same coroners are also represented on one or more of the scatter diagrams relating to other decades and are represented there by use of the same letter.

60 See note 30.

61 See, for example, National Register of Archives, Eye borough records, compiled by Ipswich and East Suffolk Record Office (1958), section H; and Hudson, W. and Tingey, J. C., Revised catalogue of the records of the city of Norwich (Norwich, 1898)Google Scholar, and N.R.A., (1959), 21 and 23.Google Scholar

62 Though the extent of the loss can be overstated. On 167 of his book Law and order in historical perspective: the case of Elizabethan Essex (London, 1974)Google Scholar Joel Samaha provides a list of coroners operating in Elizabethan Essex, drawn from the Queen's Bench ancient indictments, which, he says, ‘do not include the coroners from special jurisdictions like the boroughs, the Duchy of Lancaster, the Liberty of Havering-atte-Bower, the Manor of Writtle, and other specially exempt areas which had their own coroners’. He appears to be referring only to the list of coroners he provides in the book, for coroners from many of these liberties did make returns (some 26% of the total number of inquests returned in the years 1570–1579, for example) and he omits John Fowler, of Hornchurch (e.g. K.B. 9, 618/66), Thomas Bedell (e.g. K.B. 9, 646/130), William Leggat, of Havering-atte-Bower (e.g. K.B. 9, 1011/23) and Thomas Whytney of Saffron Walden (K.B. 9, 641/343) from his list. See also Table 6 referring to ‘The proportion of inquests returned from market towns and rural areas’, in Stevenson, S. J., ‘Social and economic contributions’, Continuity and Change 2 (2).Google Scholar

63 John, Ogilby, Britannia…(London, 1675).Google Scholar

64 Laslett, , World we have lost, 57.Google Scholar

65 On the ‘problem’ of the wandering poor (or, conversely, the advantages of labour mobility), see, respectively, Frank, Aydelotte, Elizabethan rogues and vagabonds and their representation in contemporary literature 2nd edn. (London, 1967)Google Scholar, and Palliser, D. M., ‘Tawney's century: brave new world or Malthusian trap?’, Economic History Review, series II, 35 (1982), 339–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66 Willan, T. S., The inland trade: studies in English internal trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Manchester, 1976)Google Scholar; Clarkson, L. A., Thepre-industrialeconomy in England, 1500–1750 (London, 1974), 13, 152–7Google Scholar; and for the revisionist view of the seventeenth-century roads, Chartres, J. A.,‘Road carrying in England in the seventeenth century: myth and reality’ Economic History Review, series II, 30 (1977), 73–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, ibid. 38, (1980), 92–9.

67 See Table 7 showing number of ‘vagrants upon whom such inquests were held’, Stevenson, S. J., ‘Social and economic contributions’, Continuity and Change 2 (2).Google Scholar

68 Middlesex and Sussex being excluded from these calculations because of the long-run lacunae in their records, leaving seven rather than nine counties for these purposes.

69 To open up another test for loss of records, a minor one but one that we can apply to all eight of these counties where substantial numbers of inquests have survived, we find from other proceedings taken by the Queen's Almoner and brought to the Star Chamber that in 21 cases drawn from these counties in these years (P.R.O., STAC 5) one case involved a man upon whom no inquest had ever been held. In eight other cases it is reasonable to assume that such inquests were held, that they form the basis of the proceedings in Star Chamber but that they no longer survive. Part of this loss, perhaps just over a third of it, can be explained by the missing files, but this leaves some 23 per cent of inquests missing in those cases where we know that Star Chamber was operating from a record of these proceedings. Again, there are qualifications. One finds that Norfolk accounts for a large proportion of these cases: 3 out of the 8 missing inquests.

70 Houston, R. and Snell, K., ‘Proto-industrialization? Cottage industry, social change and the industrial revolution’, Historical Journal, 21 (1984), 473–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71 See Stevenson, S. J.,‘Social and economic contributions’ in Continuity and Change 2 (2), Section in.Google Scholar

72 As in the parish register of Terling, Essex; Essex Record Office, T/R 60, Terling. Keith Wrightson drew my attention to this example.

73 The diary of Ralph Josselin seems to indicate that news of suicide spread quickly, for apart from three in his parish which he mentions (on 4 November 1644, 23 September 1665 and 1 January 1668) he mentions one also in the neighbouring hamlet of Colne Engaine (on 24 April 1658). Macfarlane, A. D. J. ed., The Diary of Ralph Josselin in 1616–1683 (London, 1976), 26–7, 520, 539, 513 and 424.Google Scholar

74 How common such corruption was is, of course, difficult to discover - unless systematic. Further to my observations in note 57 above, it was discovered in the case of Martin Cotes, a coroner in Kent, that the relative distributions in his ‘clear-up’ rates for verdicts of suicide and accidental drowning were statistically significantly different - a very rare occurrence. Unlike the case of John Kene in Suffolk, referred to above, the distribution in Cotes' case suggested corruption. The proportion of his cases he found to be accidental drowning was significantly greater than that of his fellow coroners throughout Kent, yet they were also cleared up at a significantly different and much slower pace than those cases which resulted in verdicts of suicide: perhaps money had to be raised or jurors specially selected.

75 P.R.O., S. P. 16/126, item 79 (1628), fos 158–9.

76 See Table 3 above.

77 J. S. Cockburn, ‘Early modern assize records as historical evidence’.

78 ibid. 244.

79 ibid. 255.

80 ibid. 222–5.

81 The strength of the facts, as Dr Hunnisett pointed out in the comparison of medieval inquest files and coroners' rolls, is nevertheless dependent upon defects of casual human observation – visual and aural – and the purposes to which historians wish to put the information at their disposal. He concluded of his comparisons that: ‘In every case there is agreement in broad outline between file and roll: on the circumstances in which the death occurred and whether by felony or misadventure. But such facts are of little general value unless they exist in very large numbers, when they can be used for statistical and comparative purposes; and not enough coroners' inquests survive from the Middle Ages for valid statistical surveys to be possible. Inquests are, therefore, used in other ways: the weapons, deodands and valuations of goods and chattels for social and economic history, the field names for local topography, the jurors and other persons for genealogy, and so on. For these purposes it is the details that are important, and it is the details which cannot be taken at their face value.’ Hunnisett, , ‘The reliability of inquisitions as historical evidence’, in Bullough, D. A. and Storey, R. L. eds, The study of medieval records; essays in honour of Kathleen Major (Oxford, 1971), 226.Google Scholar It is, of course, my contention that we have these large enough numbers for the early-modern period.

82 Cockburn, J. S., ‘Early modern assize records as historical evidence’, 224.Google Scholar

83 Wilkinson's, John… Treatise… Concerning the office… of coroners and sherifes (1628), lvGoogle Scholar, also charges a coroner that ‘he should carrie records of his own view…’. On Cotes, see also note 74, above.

84 See, for example, P.R.O., K.B. 9, 584/105. This practice became habitual in the returns from Warwickshire and Northamptonshire.

85 K.B. 9, 589/167. But even the re-writing of the verdict in the margin could, on occasion, cause difficulties; on two occasions the clerk first inscribed ‘felo. de se’ in the margin of the inquest when it was clear from the form of the inquest that this had not been the verdict of the jury (K.B. 9, 1012/73 and 1014/91).

86 K.B. 9, 675/198.

87 Essex Record Office, D/DP M. 99/membrane 59v.

88 K.B. 9, 671/198.

89 Now the parish of Latchingdon and Snoreham.

90 Of the four other inquests on members of the Ingatestone community held in this period (P.R.O., K.B. 9, 675/198,606/144,671/275 and 637/208) only the suicide of the widow Alice Pepper was also mentioned - as a copyholder - in these meticulously kept Petre Family court rolls (Essex R.O. D/DP M.99/m. 30v.), the others only traceable by the passage of their families through the parish register - some indication, perhaps, of the social depth of the coroners' concerns. (All references to persons at Ingatestone can be checked by their names in Essex R.O. T/A 961.)

91 See Ramsey, P., Tudor economic problems (London, 1965), 11Google Scholar, and Grassby, R. ‘The personal wealth of the business community in seventeenth-century England’, Economic History Review, 23, (1970), 222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

92 Cockburn, J. S., ‘Early modern assize records as historical evidence’, 245.Google Scholar

93 ibid. 243.

94 P.R.O., K.B. 9, 1012/73.

95 K.B. 9,668/341.

96 K.B. 9, 670/78. ‘nuper’ /‘late’ /or ‘former’ are, however, words of extreme ambiguity in this context; they could refer to the late relationship either during Richard's lifetime, or during her's. ‘Wife of’ is inferred from ‘nuper uxor’.

97 Joan Coppyng, ‘… spinster et nuper uxor Jacobi Coppyng’ (K.B. 9, 635/298); Joan Nicholas,‘… spinster et nuper uxor Thome Nicholas… husbandman (K.B. 9,652/359); Margaret Dymer, ‘…spinster et uxor Richardi Dymer’ (K.B. 9, 588/208); Joan Bedell, ‘…spinster et uxor Johanni Bedell, husbandman viri sui.’ (K.B. 9, 1021/53); when Catherine Kendall was drowned, in Suffolk, in 1568, she was described as’…filia Johannae Randall, spinster,’ -though this is, of course, not necessarily to imply that Joan Randall was married. (K.B. 9, 1014/292).

98 Alice Ludford, ‘…uxor Nichi Ludford,’ and later in the inquest ‘…domo…Nichi Ludforde magistri sui.’ - surely an error? (K.B. 9, 638/109)

99 77 per cent of the Norfolk inquests and 62 per cent of the Essex inquests give the estimated age of the deceased at death.

100 K.B. 9, 629/289.

101 The median age of married women appearing in the Essex and Norfolk inquest was 40, of ‘spinsters’ 16 and of widows 62.

102 Carol Wiener's study of the Hertfordshire Quarter Sessions, 1589–1603, suggests that in the instance of indictments against married women there was some trend towards the portrayal of the guilty as spinsters – so as to protect husbands from the suggestion of collusion in their crimes: ‘Is a spinster an unmarried woman?’, American Journal of Legal History 20 (1976), 27–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar We have already seen that in the case of inquests confusion of the married and the unmarried was insignificant, – perhaps because in this sphere the intervention of external forces obviated the possibility that responsibility might be imputed to the husband; 90 per cent of the 134 women identified as married in this sample were adjudged suicides, as against only 73 per cent of the 93 spinsters so identified.

103 Ogle, , ‘Suicides in England and Wales…’, 102.Google Scholar Seventeenth-century thinkers seem also to have understood this point perfectly well; Rev. Sym, J. in Life's preservative against self-killing (1637), 124Google Scholar, observed that ‘there are many more self-murderers than the world takes notice of’, and he adds ‘or that do thinke themselves to be such’; and ‘… indirectly a man may be guilty of self-murder by needless mutilating of himselfe, and cutting off any of his members (as Origen did) to the hurt and danger of his life’ (ibid. 110). He continues: ‘…a man may be guilty of indirect self-murder, by practising of Physick or Chirurgery unskilfully, immoderately, or dangerously, upon himselfe…’ (111). Duellers were ‘…guilty of more than indirect self-murder’ (114–15). Cf. Karl Menninger, Man against himself (New York, 1936).

104 Hair, P. E. H., ‘Deaths from Violence’, 16.Google Scholar

105 Hunnisett, R. F., ‘The reliability of inquisitions’, 206–7.Google Scholar

106 See examples quoted by Walker, J. C. M. in ‘Crime and capital punishment in Elizabethan Essex’ (unpublished B. A. Thesis, Faculty of Medieval and Modern History, University of Birmingham), 117–19Google Scholar; on information provided by Dr. J. A. Sharpe, of the University of York.

107 See Cockburn, J. S., ed., Calendar of Assize Records, Hertfordshire Indictments, James I (H.M.S.O., 1975), 75–6.Google Scholar Similar patterns of categorisation arise in dealing with prosecutions of mothers for infanticide. There are several times more cases of supposed accidental drowning of children under age two occurring in the coroners' inquests than ever result in indictments of infanticide; it would seem an unwarranted step not to take account of these if one is to leap to so bold a model of ‘environmental causes of infanticide’ as that advanced by Hoffer, P. C. and Hull, N. E. H. at the end of their book Murdering mothers: infanticide in England and New England, 1558–1803 (New York, 1981), 175–81.Google Scholar

108 Sprott, S. E., The English Debate on Suicide from Donne to Hume, 159–61.Google Scholar

109 John, Graunt, Natural and political observations…upon the bills of mortality (1662), 76 ff.Google Scholar; reprinted in Laslett, P., The earliest classics: John Graunt and Gregory King, (London, 1973).Google Scholar

110 Laslett, P., World we have lost, 146.Google Scholar

111 Wilkinson, Treatise, 6r.

112 P.R.O., K.B. 9, 661/263.

113 K.B. 9, 629/250.

114 K.B. 9,676/194. Only this case and two others escaped the verdict ‘felo. de se’ returned on thirteen other persons whose insanity was mentioned, namely Thomas Thompson, curate of St James's, Isle of Grain, Kent, who was drowned in a pond ‘imbecillis existens’ (K.B. 9, 668/326), and John Harvye, who on the road from Wramplingham to Barforth, Norfolk, fell into the mill-pond at Wramplingham, described as ‘existens pauper et imbecillis’ (K.B. 9. 1023/123). We may infer from Sym, Life's preservative, that insanity as described in these inquests could involve voluntary self-destruction in the periods of lucidity, which ‘imbecility’ (permanent or congenital subnormality, or senility) could not: ‘… if a Child kill itselfe that hath not attained to age of discretion, or to use of reason; or if a man or woman kill herselfe, that is an Ideote, or natural! foole; or is mad, constantly, or in a fit of Lunacie; or of a Fever; or Calenture; or in a fit of Phrensie [epilepsy/‘fallyng sicknes’] or by mischance; no Court of Equity or lustice… will condemne such a one for a self-murderer.’ (290–1).

115 Of one Margaret Fenner, for example: ‘… Margareta infecta existens et seipse egrota de quodum morbo vocat The Fallyng Sickness… dei morbi rapta expiravit cuius pretextu… Margareta per infortunium in fontem submersa fuit’ (K.B. 9. 635/297); also K. B. 9, 652/335, 1026/69, 653/234, 608/203, 1023/102 and 1036/390.

116 K.B.9,1012/69;‘…in stagnum seipsam immersit et voluntarie submersit propter morbi vehementia in qua…diu ante afficiebatur.’

117 Hunnisett, , Medieval Coroner, 21.Google Scholar

118 Whether or not falling from horses was a common form of suicide, jurors had no conception of suicide achieved by road accidents (except in the most obvious circumstances, as when John Tooth, one of a gang repairing the highway at Knockholt, Kent, in 1583, threw himself in front of the wheel of an ox-cart carrying stones: K.B. 9, 658/416). For this reason, and so that suicides, or possible suicides, along major roads are not swollen by what are usually considered as common road accidents, those who drowned while handling horses in rivers, or on bridges, have been ignored.

119 P.R.O., K.B. 9, 668/325.

120 K.B. 9, 66/240.

121 K.B. 9, 606/77.

122 K.B. 9, 637/202.

123 K.B. 9, 668/322.

124 K.B. 9, 607/58.

125 K.B. 9, 1014/75.

126 K.B. 9, 657/288.

127 K. B. 9,605/109. The form of the verdicts coroners made out were generally stereotyped, and John Wilkinson's Treatise… concerning the office and authorities of Coroners…, 36v. to 42r., provides basic models, for all eventualities, that are essentially the same as those in use seventy years before.

128 See Douglas, J., The social meanings of suicide (Princeton, 1966)Google Scholar; and Atkinson, J. M., ‘Societal reactions to suicide; the role of Coroners' Definitions’, in Cohen, J. ed, Images of deviance (Harmondsworth, 1971) 165–91.Google Scholar

129 Cf. P. E. H. Hair, ‘Death from violence’, and ‘A note on the incidence of Tudor suicide’.

130 Cf. Cobb, R., Death in Paris: The records of the Basse-Geole de la Seine October 1795 - September 1801… (Oxford, 1978), 4, 6, 8, 16–19, 45, 48, 96–98.Google Scholar Prof. Cobb's ‘existentialist’ discourse goes much further in attributing motives than I would myself be willing to go and he is also clearly more willing to take the evidence of his procès-verbaux de mart violente at their face value.

131 P.R.O., K.B. 9/600, m. 165; 629/m. 250; and 1027/mm. 69 and 70. See also note 23, above.

132 Michael, MacDonald's article, ‘The secularization of suicide in England, 1660–1800’, Past and Present, 3 (1986), 50–97Google Scholar, appeared too late to mention here in detail, but it seems that his method differs from my own, in that, where numbers have been counted, the cases considered only related to verdicts of suicide.