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The displacement of Providence: policing and prosecution in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Malcolm Gaskill
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Continuity and Change , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , December 1996 , pp. 341 - 374
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 A true report of the horrible murther, which was comitted in the house of Sir Jerome Bowes, Knight (London, 1607)Google Scholar, quotation at sig. A4 [Pollard, A. W. and Redgrave, G. R., A short-title catalogue of books printed in England … 1475–1640 (Oxford, 1926Google Scholar; rev. Jackson, W. A. et al. , 2 vols., London, 1976–1986) (hereafter STC), 3434].Google Scholar For another example of a clerical interpretation of the wind as an expression of God's power, see Stennett, Joseph, God's awful summons to a sinful nation considered (London, 1738), 35.Google Scholar

2 On Providence in general, see Thomas, Keith, Religion and the decline of magic: studies in popular belief in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England (London, 1971), ch. 4Google Scholar; Worden, Blair, ‘Providence and politics in Cromwellian England’, Past and Present 109 (1985), 55–99, esp. pp. 58n.–59n.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walsham, Alexandra, ‘Aspects of providentialism in early modern England’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1994)Google Scholar, esp. ch. I, her ‘“The fatall vesper”: providentialism and anti-popery in late Jacobean London’, Past and Present 144 (1994), 36–87.Google Scholar On Providence in cheap print and sermons, see Walsham, , ‘Aspects of providentialism’, chs. 1–4, esp. pp. 30–62Google Scholar; Wilson, Dudley, Signs and portents: monstrous births from the middle ages to the Enlightenment (London, 1993), ch. 2Google Scholar; Lake, Peter, ‘Deeds against nature: protestantism, cheap print and murder in early modern England’ in Sharpe, Kevin and Lake, Peter eds., Culture and politics in early Stuart England (London, 1994), 257–83;CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gaskill, Malcolm, ‘Attitudes to crime in early modern England: with special reference to witchcraft, coining and murder’ (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1994), 215–25.Google Scholar

3 On how crimes were brought to trial, see Herrup, Cynthia B., The common peace: participation and the criminal law in seventeenth-century England (Cambridge, 1987), ch. 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On malicious prosecution, see ibid., pp. 124–7; Ingram, M. J., ‘Communities and courts: law and disorder in early seventeenth-century Wiltshire’, in Cockburn, J. S. ed., Crime in England 1550–1800 (London, 1977), 116–22Google Scholar; Beattie, J. M., Crime and the courts in England 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1986), 38–9Google Scholar; and Hay, Douglas, ‘Prosecution and power: malicious prosecution in the English courts, 1750–1850’, in Hay, Douglas and Snyder, Francis eds., Policing and prosecution in Britain, 1750–1850 (Oxford, 1989), 350–1, 378.Google Scholar For the contrast with inquisitorial justice on the continent, see Lenman, Bruce and Parker, Geoffrey, ‘The state, the community and the criminal law in early modern Europe’, in Gatrell, V. A. C., Lenman, Bruce and Parker, Geoffrey eds., Crime and the law: the social history of crime in western Europe since 1500 (London, 1980), 11–48Google Scholar, and Shapiro, Barbara J., Probability and certainty in seventeenth-century England (Princeton, 1983), 173–8.Google Scholar

4 On secularization, see Sommerville, C. John, The secularization of early modern England: from religious culture to religious faith (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar; Scribner, Bob, ‘Cosmic order and daily life: sacred and secular in pre-industrial German society’, in Greyerz, Kaspar von ed., Religion and society in early modern Europe 1500–1800 (London, 1984), 17–32Google Scholar; Burke, Peter, ‘Religion and secularisation’, in Burke, Peter ed., The new Cambridge modern history, vol. XIII (Cambridge, 1979), 293–317CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Acquaviva, Sabino S., The decline of the sacred in industrial society (Oxford, 1979).Google Scholar See also Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic, esp. ch. 22.

5 The lawes and statutes of God concerning the punishment to be inflicted upon wilfull murderers (London, 1646), 3Google Scholar, and [Kyd?, Thomas] The trueth of the most wicked and secret murthering of John Brewen (London, 1592) [STC 15095], 9.Google Scholar

6 British Library, London (hereafter BL), Harleian MS 583, fos. 16v–17.

7 3 Hen. VII c. 2 (1487); 3 Hen. VII c. 1 (1487); 4 Hen. VII c. 12 (1488–1489); 23 Hen. VIII. c. 13 (1531–1532); 33 Hen. VIII. c. 23 (1541–1542); 2 & 3 Edw. VI. c. 24 (1548). The preamble to a statute of 1512 asserted that: ‘Roberyes Murders and Felonies dayle encrease … in more heynous open & detestable wyse then hath ben ofte seen in tymes paste’ (4 Hen. VIII. c. 2).

8 4 Hen. VII. c. 13 (1488–1489); 12 hen. VII. c. 7 (1496–1497); 4 Hen. VIII. c. 2 (1512); 4& 5 Ph. & Mar. c. 4 (1557–1558). Formerly, murderers could seek sanctuary in a church, and abjure the realm before a coroner before entering permanent exile. Murderers might also purge themselves by the favourable testimony of their neighbours (Hunnisett, R. F., The medieval coroner (Cambridge, 1961), ch. 3).Google Scholar

9 On the law against poisoning, see 22 Hen. VIII. c. 9 (1530–1531); 1 Edw. VI. c. 12 (1547); and Bellamy, John, The Tudor law of treason (London, 1979), 49.Google Scholar On witchcraft see 33 Hen. VIII. c. 8 (1542); 5 Eliz. c. 16 (1563); 1 Jac. I. c. 12 (1604); and Thomas, , Religion and the decline of magic, 525–7.Google Scholar On suicide, see Fulbecke, William, A parallele or conference of the civill law, the canon law and the common law(London, 1601), 90Google Scholar; and MacDonald, Michael and Murphy, Terence, Sleepless souls: suicide in early modern England (Oxford, 1990), esp. ch. 1.Google Scholar On infanticide, see 21 Jac. I. c. 27 (1624); Wrightson, Keith, ‘Infanticide in European history’, Criminal Justice History 3 (1982), 1–20Google ScholarPubMed; Hoffer, Peter C. and Hull, N. E. H., Murdering mothers: infanticide in England and New England 1558–1803 (New York, 1981)Google Scholar; Malcolmson, R. W., ‘Infanticide in the eighteenth century’, in Cockburn, ed., Crime in England, 187–209, esp. pp. 196–7Google Scholar; and Jackson, Mark, ‘New-born child murder: a study of suspicion, evidence and proof in eighteenth-century England’ (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Leeds University, 1991).Google Scholar On murders of law officers, see Munday, Anthony, A view of sundry examples: reporting many straunge murthers (London, 1580) reprinted in Shakespeare Society's Papers (1851), 86Google Scholar; and BL, Additional MS 36115, fo. 79v. For a summary, see SirLeicester, Peter, Charges to the grand jury at quarter sessions 1660–1677, ed. Halcrow, Elizabeth M. (Chetham Society, 5 Manchester, 1953), 11.Google Scholar

10 1 Jac. I. c. 8 (1603–1604); Calendar State Papers, Domestic (hereafter CSPD), 1649–1650, 514; CSPD, 1655–1656, 262; BL, Additional MS 35979, fo. 68; 36115, fo. 79v. The 1604 Act was used into the eighteenth century to bolster murder prosecutions; see Select trials at the sessions-house in the Old Bailey, for murder, robberies, rapes, sodomy, coining, frauds, bigamy, and other offences, 4 vols. (London, 1742), vol. I, 225.

11 Sharpe, J. A., ‘Domestic homicide in early modern England’, Historical Journal 24 (1981), 29–48, esp. pp. 32–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Crime in seventeenth-century England: a county study (Cambridge, 1983), 123–32Google Scholar; Cockburn, J. S., ‘Patterns of violence in English society: homicide in Kent 1560–1985’, Past and Present 130 (1991), 70–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 BL, Harleian MS 583, fo. 11.

13 Hunnisett, , Medieval coroner, 11–12Google Scholar; Havard, J. D. J., The detection of secret homicide: a study of the medico-legal system of investigation of sudden and unexplained deaths (London, 1960), 19Google Scholar; Green, Thomas A., ‘Societal concepts of criminal liability for homicide in medieval England’, Speculum 47 (1972), 671.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Ballinger, J. ed., Calendar of Wynn (of Gwydir) papers 1515–1690 (Aberystwyth, 1926), no. 750.Google Scholar For other examples of murderers protected from the law by local people, see Public Record Office, London (hereafter PRO), STAC 7/9/14; CSPD, 1547–1580, 279–80; 1581–1590, 75; and Salt, D. H. G. ed., Staffordshire quarter sessions rolls, Easter 1608 – Trinity 1609 (Kendal, 1950), 136–7.Google Scholar For a more indulgent view of popular attitudes to murder, see Cockburn, , ‘Patterns of violence’, 76.Google Scholar

15 Wrightson, Keith, ‘Two concepts of order: justices, constables and jurymen in seventeenth-century England’, in Brewer, John and Styles, John eds., An ungovernable people: the English and their law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (London, 1980), 21–46.Google Scholar On discretionary justice in the community, see also Herrup, Cynthia B., ‘Law and morality in seventeenth-century England’, Past and Present 106 (1985), 102–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 The statutes stipulated that JPs should examine suspects and witnesses and certify the record to the trial court, see Langbein, John H., Prosecuting crime in the Renaissance: England, Germany, France (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 1, 22, 34–5, 39, 44–5, 64–104, and passimCrossRefGoogle Scholar; 1 & 2 Ph. & Mar. c. 13 (1554–1555); and 2 & 3 Ph. & Mar. c. 10 (1555). See also Herrup, , Common peace, 85–91Google Scholar; Gleason, J. H., The justices of the peace in England 1558 to 1640 (Oxford, 1969), chs. 5–6, esp. pp. 71–5Google Scholar. For fifteenth-century legislation urging JP5 to act against murderers see 3 Hen. VII. c. 1(1487); 3 Hen. VII. c. 2(1487); and 4 Hen. VII. c. 12 (1488–1489).

17 From the 1560s JPs swore oaths of allegiance, and their work was scrutinized by the judiciary and Privy Council, especially where serious felonies were concerned. Constables and clerks of the peace were also encouraged to report unsatisfactory JPs; see Cockburn, J. S., A history of the English assizes 1558–1714 (Cambridge, 1972), 90–1, 101–7, 126–7, 157–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fletcher, Anthony, Reform in the provinces: the government of Stuart England (New Haven, 1986), 53–5Google Scholar; Sharpe, J. A., Crime in early modern England 1550–1750 (London, 1984), 28–9.Google Scholar

18 Fletcher, , Reform in the provinces, 143.Google Scholar In general, see ibid, chs. 3–5; Dawson, John P., A history of lay judges (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), esp. pp. 139–40 and 181–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gleason, , Justices of the peace, ch. 7Google Scholar; Landau, Norma, The justices of the peace, 1679–1760 (Berkeley, 1984)Google Scholar; Herrup, , Common peace, 61–2 and passimGoogle Scholar; and Beattie, , Crime and the courts, 59–67.Google Scholar Keith Wrightson has argued that JPs rigorously enforced penal legislation only when forced to do so by the Privy Council (‘Two concepts of order’, 26). Judges often had to prompt JPs to act against murderers; see for example Cockburn, J. S. ed., Western circuit assize orders 1629–1648: a calendar (Camden Society, 17; London, 1976), 106, 221–2, 226, 240, 244–5, 253–4, 255, 261, 263, 267, 274–5, 281, 286.Google Scholar For an example of a conscientious JP, see Larminie, V. M., The godly magistrate: the private philosophy and public life of Sir John Newdigate 1571–1610 (Dugdale Society, 28; Oxford, 1982).Google Scholar

19 ‘Memorandum book of Sir Walter Calverley, bart.’, in Yorkshire diaries and autobiographies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Surtees Society, 65; London, 1875), 87.Google Scholar In 1647 judges at the Hampshire assizes were unable to try an infanticide because JPs had not bound any witnesses to appear (Cockburn, ed., Western circuit assize orders, 259).Google Scholar

20 Cooper, Thomas, The cry and revenge of blood: expressing the nature and haynousnesse of wilful murther (London, 1620) [STC 5698], 24.Google Scholar For examples of murderers being bailed, see PRO, STAC 8/54/8, m. 8 (1615); The manner of the cruell outragious murther of William Storre … committed by Francis Carrwright (Oxford, 1603) [STC 23295], sig. A4Google Scholar; Browning, A. ed., Memoirs of Sir John Reresby (Glasgow, 1936), 328Google Scholar; Cockburn, J. S. ed., Calendar of assize records: Essex indictments, Elizabeth I (London, 1978), no. 1633(1586)Google Scholar; Cockburn, ed., Western circuit assize orders, 15 (1630)Google Scholar; and Hardy, W. J. et al. eds., Hertford county records: notes and extracts from the sessions rolls, 10 vols. (Hertford, 1905–1957), vol. VI, 506 (1698).Google Scholar See also Herrup, , Common peace, 50.Google Scholar

21 A murderer was freed in 1589 because Hereford JPs had omitted from their presentment the county where the crime had been committed (Baker, J. H., ‘The refinement of English criminal jurisprudence, 1500–1848’, in Knafla, L. A. ed., Crime and criminal justice in Europe and Canada (Ontario, 1981), 20).Google Scholar For other cases, see ibid, 20–1. In 1609 a JP was accused of drafting a murder indictment in which the word ‘murder’ did not appear and the following year another was charged with suppressing a recognizance binding a suspected murderer (PRO, STAC 8/54/4, m. 2 8/95/8, m. 8).

22 Forma procedendi in placitis coronae regis (1194), cf. Maitland, F. W., The constitutional history of England (Cambridge, 1908), 43–4Google Scholar; 4 Edw. I. Offic. Coronatoris (1275–1276). For the early history of the coroner, see Hunnisett, Medieval coroner and Havard, Detection of secret homicide, ch. 2.

23 Harvard, , Defection of Secret homicide, 36–9Google Scholar; Hunnisett, R. F. ed., Sussex coroners' inquests 1485–1558 (Sussex Record Society, 74; Lewes, 1985), xxxvii and xlvGoogle Scholar; Sharpe, , Crime in seventeenth-century England, 33–4Google Scholar; Hunnisett, , Medieval coroner, 126–33 and 173–4.Google Scholar Sir Thomas Smith described a typical coroner as ‘the meaner sort of gentleman’ (quoted in Havard, Detection of secret homicide, 37).

24 Sharpe, Crime in early modern England, 60. The comparative rarity with which murderers seem to have committed suicide in seventeenth-century England may reflect a relatively high chance of the murderer escaping punishment (Sharpe, Crime in seventeenth-century England, 33). The nineteenth-century homicide rate was doubtless affected by an improved ability to identify unnatural deaths; see Gatrell, V. A. C., ‘Theft and violence in Victorian and Edwardian England’, in Gatrell, V. A. C. et al. eds., Crime and the law, 247.Google Scholar

25 3 Hen. VII. c. 2 (1487); Hen. VIII. c. 7 (1509–1510); 1 & 2 Ph. & Mar. c. 13 (1554–1555); 2 & 3 Ph. & Mar. c. 10 (1555); Hunnisett, , Medieval coroner, 197–9Google Scholar; Havard, , Detection of secret homicide, 30–6Google Scholar; Herrup, , Common peace, 47.Google Scholar; The 1530 Poisoning Act first made JPs and judges responsible for the conduct of coroners (22 Hen. VIII. c. 9). A handbook of 1538 told JPs what to expect from coroners, see Fitzherbert, Anthony, The newe boke of justices of the peas (London, 1538), fos. 55–63.Google Scholar In practice, however, as Hunnisett, R. F. has written, ‘The JPs were remarkably uncritical, particularly given the blatant manner in which most coroners flouted the law’ (Wiltshire coroners' bills, 1752–1796 (Wiltshire Record Society, 36 Devizes, 1981), xliii).Google Scholar For a list of statutes affecting coroners, see Wellington, R. H., The King's coroner, 2 vols. (London, 1905–1906),Google Scholar vol. I, passim. Although coroners' handbooks were available, they do not give advice on collecting evidence; see Wilkinson, John, A treatise collected out of the statutes of this kingdom … concerning the office and authorities of coroners and sherifes (London, 1618),Google Scholar and Greenwood, William, Bouleuthriou: or a practical demonstration of county-judicatures (London, 1659).Google Scholar

26 Stevenson, S. J., ‘The rise of suicide verdicts in south-east England, 1530–1590: the legal process’, Continuity and Change 2 (1) (1987), 44–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 In 1610 an Essex coroner who initially told a jury that their case ‘was a very fearfull and the most cruell and apparant murder and the ugliest Corpes that ever he sawe’, was accused of subsequently concealing this by asserting that the deceased had been gored by a bull (PRO, STAC 8/18/13, mm. 1–2). For other Star Chamber cases where coroners were accused of corruption, see PRO, STAC 10/1/27 (1540s); 8/125/4, mm. 10, 12–14 (1606); 8/311/28, m. 3(1609); and 8/139/12, m. 70(1612). See also Acts of the Privy Council (hereafter APC) 1575–1577, 263, and 1588–1589, 64–5, 110–11, 394–5.

28 Hunnisett, , Medieval coroner, 118–126Google Scholar; Havard, , Detection of secret homicide, 29–31, 37.Google Scholar

29 In 1576 the Privy Council heard a complaint from Gloucester that persons ‘appoineted [sic] for thexamination of the murder are heild as partiall, and that some of them are either affinitive or frindes to the said offenders’ (APC, 1575–77, 203). For similar allegations, see APC, 1587–1588, 295, and 1591–1592, 481–2; PRO, STAC 8/24/16, m. 19(1618); Cockburn, ed., Western Circuit assize orders, 116–17 (1637)Google Scholar; and Howell, T. B. ed., A complete collection of state trials and proceedings for high treason and other crimes and misdemeanors, 42 vols. (London, 1809–1898),Google Scholar vol. XIII, 1362 (1682).

30 Herrup, , Common peace, 70–2.Google Scholar For two good examples of descriptions given in the hue and cry, see Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone NR /JQp 1/34 (New Romney, 1621), and Q/SB 27, fos. 90, 111(1704). On constables, see Kent, Joan R., The English village constable 1580–1642: a social and administrative study (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; Wrightson, , ‘Two concepts of order’, esp. pp. 27–9, 39Google Scholar; and Sharpe, , Crime in early modern England, 76–7.Google Scholar Raising the hue and cry was a statutory obligation under 27 Eliz. c. 13 (1585). In cases of infanticide, churchwardens and overseers of the poor also led searches see, for example, Proceedings … in the Old-Bayly, the 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, and 28th days of February, 1697 (London, 1698), 3–4Google Scholar, and PRO, DURH 17/1, Part II Assizes 1719 (unnumbered fos., evidence against Mary Hudson, Durham).

31 Cambridge University Library (hereafter CUL), EDR E14 1653, and E15 Aug. 1654 (unnumbered fos., evidence against John Bemrose).

32 CSPD, 1649–50, 81. For another example, see Hardy, et al. eds., Hertford … sessions rolls, vol. 1, 287.Google Scholar In 1596 Sir Edward Hext partly blamed a low rate of reported crime on ‘the negligence of constables in taking offenders’ (quoted in Wrightson, Keith, English society 1580–1680 (London, 1982), 156).Google Scholar On negligence and corruption, see also Kent, , English village constable, 206–7, 211–16, 225.Google Scholar

33 Cockburn, , History of the English assizes, 107–8.Google Scholar For examples of homicide cases where the suspects escaped from gaol, see Lister, John ed., West Riding sessions records: orders, 1611–1642, indictments, 1637–1642 (Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Association Record Series, 54Leeds, 1915),Google Scholar vol. XV, 265, 301–2, and CUL, EDR E14 Assizes 1653, and E15 1654 (unnumbered fos., evidence against Thomas Garrett and Robert Bell).

34 Thompson, E. P., customs in common (London, 1991), 200Google Scholar; Underdown, David, Revel, riot and rebellion: popular politics and culture in England 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985), 23Google Scholar; and Fletcher, A. J., ‘Honour, reputation and local officeholding in Elizabethan and Stuart England’, in Fletcher, Anthony and Stevenson, John eds., Order and disorder in early modern England (Cambridge, 1985), 99, 103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 PRO, SP 36/9/4/7.

36 PRO, SP 35/34/180.

37 On the development of policing, see Emsley, Clive, Policing and its context 1750–1870 (London, 1983), esp. chs. 3–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Gatrell, V. A. C., ‘Crime, authority and the policeman-state’, in Thompson, F. M. L. ed., The Cambridge social history of Britain, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar, vol. III, part I.

38 Fletcher, , Reform in the provinces, 62Google Scholar; Beattie, , Crime and the courts, 59–64.Google Scholar Norma Landau distinguishes between patriarchal and patrician self-images of eighteenth- century JPs – the former relied on community deference, the latter on membership of a distinct élite culture (Justices of the peace, 2–4 and passim). JPs who could be manipulated were known as ‘pocket’, ‘basket’ or ‘trading’ justices; see Kent, Joan R., ‘Attitudes of members of the House of Commons to the regulation of “personal conduct” in late Elizabethan and early Stuart England’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 46 (1973), 52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cockburn, , History of English assizes, 103Google Scholar; Landau, , Justices of the peace, 85; and Beattie, Crime and the courts, 63–4.Google Scholar On the political appointment of JPs, see Glassey, Lionel K. J., Politics and the appointment of justices of the peace 1675–1720 (Oxford, 1979).Google Scholar

39 Herrup, , Common peace, 55Google Scholar; Beattie, , Crime and the courts, 17, 59, 62Google Scholar; Emsley, , Policing and its context, 22Google Scholar; Landau, , Justices of the peace, 2, 23.Google Scholar, In 1719 Sir Littleton Powys JKB (Justice of King's Bench) complained to the Lord Chancellor of ‘a sort of general neglect all over England, of the appearance of the justices of peace at the assizes…the trials of felons were often imperfect by the non-attendance of the committing justice of peace’ (Howell, ed., State trials, vol. XV, 1421).Google Scholar Some eighteenth-century JPs fought private battles against property crime, but they should be regarded as exceptional; see Styles, John, ‘Sir John Fielding and the problem of criminal investigation in eighteenth-century England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series,. 33 (1983), 127–49Google Scholar, and his ‘An eighteenth-century magistrate as detective: Samuel Lister of Little Horton’, Bradford Antiquary, new series 47 (1982), 98–117.Google Scholar

40 Havard, , Detection of secret homicide, 36–8, 64Google Scholar; Hunnisett, ed., Wiltshire coroners' bills, xliv–xlviiiGoogle Scholar; Hunnisett, R. F., ‘The importance of eighteenth-century coroners' bills’, in Ives, E. W. and Manchester, A. H. eds., Law, litigants and the legal profession (London, 1983), 133–8.Google Scholar For the later development of the medico-legal aspects of the office, see Havard, , Detection of secret homicide, 53–64Google Scholar, and Forbes, Thomas Rogers, ‘Crowner's quest’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 68, part 1 (1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar In 1752 coroners were granted a fee for every inquest, regardless of cause of death, but in practice magistrates could and did deny this payment (25 Geo. II. c. 29; Havard, , Detection of secret homicide, 38).Google Scholar

41 In 1648 the inhabitants of Storgursey, Somerset, spent £4 5s 4d in prosecuting a murderer, as well as 40s paid to the constable by the victim's sister. A JP was ordered to pay the constable out of the murderer's forfeited property, see Cockburn, ed., Western circuit assize orders, 279.Google Scholar For other examples from 1638 and 1680, respectively, see ibid, 151, Atkinson, J. C. ed., Quarter sessions records, 8 vols. (North Riding Record Society London, 1884–1890)Google Scholar, vol. VII, 30.

42 Atkinson, ed., Quarter sessions records, vol. VII, 187.Google Scholar

43 On the use of rewards and pardons against coiners, see Gaskill, , ‘Attitudes to crime’, ch. 5, esp. pp. 168–84.Google Scholar On informing in general, see Elton, G. R., ‘Informing for profit: a sidelight on Tudor methods of law-enforcement’, Cambridge Historical Journal 11 (1953–1955), 149–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beresford, M. W., ‘The common informer: the penal statutes and economic regulation’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 10 (1957–1958), 221–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Davies, Margaret Gay, The enforcement of English apprenticeship: a study in applied mercantilism (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), esp. ch. 2.Google Scholar Rewards were not abolished until 1951 (Beresford, ‘The common informer’, 221). John H. Langbein points out that, strictly speaking, pardons were only guarantees from immunity from prosecution, see ‘Shaping the eighteenth-century criminal trial: a view from the Ryder sources’, University of Chicago Law Review 50 (1983), 91–6.Google Scholar

44 Newcastle Courant (2 Sept. 1721), 10; Earle, Peter, The making of the English middle class: business, society and family lfe in London, 1660–1730 (London, 1989), 14.Google Scholar

45 PRO, SP 35/16/207–8, and 35/17/147–8. In 1712 the Lord Treasurer authorized a request for an advertisement to be published offering a pardon for an accessory, and a government reward of £100, after smugglers murdered an excise officer on the Kent coast. (SP 34/18/156–60).

46 PRO, SP 35/49/244–6.

47 Isham, Gyles ed., The diary of Thomas Isham of Lamport… 1671 to 1673 (Farnborough, 1971), 93.Google Scholar

48 London Gazette (22–6 Apr. 1703), 2. In 1707 a Sussex Quaker who fled to London after murdering a woman was given as ‘a tall stout black Man, aged about 56 Years, having had the Small Pox, full Breasted, going very upright, the third Finger on his right hand very thick, some grey Hairs in his Head and Beard’ (London Gazette (27–31 Mar. 1707), 2).

49 In 1707 a detailed description of a silver tobacco box taken from a Middlesex murdered man was printed. In addition to a reward offered by the victim's widow, subsequent issues carried a government notice offering a pardon for accomplices, see London Gazette (30 Oct.–3 Nov. 1707), 2, (27 Nov.–Dec. 1707), 2; (3–6 Feb. 1701), 2.

50 London Gazette (30 Oct.–3 Nov. 1707), 2; (27 Nov.–Dec. 1707), 2; (3–6 Feb. 1701), 2.

51 Coke quoted in Beresford, , ‘Common informer’, 221Google Scholar; Boldero, John, The nature and duty of justice in relation to the chief magistrate and the people (Northampton, 1723), 14–15.Google Scholar For criticism of the corrupting influence of rewards in coining cases, see Historical Manuscripts Commission, Eighth Report (London, 1881), 71Google Scholar, and Haynes, Hopton, Brief memoires relating to the silver & gold coins of England (1700), BL, Lansdowne MS 801, fo. 36v.Google Scholar

52 Gentleman's Magazine (hereafter Gent. Mag.) (Jan. 1733), 43.Google Scholar

53 Davies, , Enforcement of English apprenticeship, 161.Google Scholar

54 John, , bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, A sermon preach'd … before the societies for reformation of manners (London, 1705), 15.Google Scholar

55 On newspapers, see Cranfield, G. A., The development of the provincial newspaper, 1700–1760 (Oxford, 1960)Google Scholar, and Plumb, J. H., ‘The commercialization of leisure in eighteenth-century England’, in McKendrick, Neil et al. eds., The birth of a consumer society: the commercialization of eighteenth-century England (London, 1982), 267–70.Google Scholar On their use to combat crime, see Styles, John, ‘Print and policing: crime advertising in eighteenth-century provincial England’, in Hay and Snyder eds., Policing and prosecution, 55–111Google Scholar, and his ‘Fielding and the problem of criminal investigation’; King, Peter, ‘Newspaper reporting, prosecution practice and perceptions of urban crime: the Colchester crime wave of 1765’, Continuity and Change 2 (3) (1987), 423–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Faller, Lincoln B., Turned to account: the forms and functions of criminal biography in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1987), 203–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the role of the middle classes in responding to social problems in general, see Davison, Lee, Hitchcock, Tim, Keirn, Tim and Shoemaker, Robert eds., Stilling the grumbling hive: the response to social and economic problems in England, 1689–1750 (Stroud, 1992), esp. the introduction.Google Scholar

57 Rayner, J. L. and Crook, G. T. eds., The complete Newgate calendar, 5 vols. (London, 1926), vol. I, 161–9Google Scholar; Gent. Mag. (Sept. 1745), 477Google Scholar; Sharpe, , Crime in seventeenth-century England, 130–1Google Scholar; PRO, ASSI 35/108/1/3. The sequence of events differs in the accounts, but the essential details are the same.

58 PRO, SP 35/41/78–80, 95, 109–10, and 35/42/10–10A.

59 Gent. Mag. (Jan. 1733), 43; (Feb. 1733), 99; (Mar. 1733), 154. In 1727 a newspaper described how word quickly reached London about a Staffordshire woman who fled to London after burying her illegitimate child, and how she was at once returned to Stafford where her mother was already held as an accomplice (British Spy: or, Derby Post-Man (15 Jun. 1727), 4).

60 For example, after a London tripe-man was murdered in 1695, his sister advertised a reward ‘that the same may come to light’ (London Gazette (26–30 Sept. 1695), 2).

61 See Walker, D. P., The decline of hell: seventeenth-century discussions of eternal torment (London, 1964)Google Scholar; Thomas, , Religion and the decline of magic, 682–3.Google Scholar

62 Select trials, vol. III, 24–5; Gent. Mag. (Sept. 1731), 394–6Google Scholar; Gloucester Journal (9 Apr. 1722), 5Google Scholar; Northampton Mercury (23 Dec. 1723), 402.Google Scholar Previously, a more conventional form of words was ‘God's all-seeing Eye’. A pamphlet from 1708 viewed an infanticidal mother's confession as a human decision appropriately, her neighbours concluded that she was insane, see The cruel mother: being a strange and unheard-of account of one Mrs Elizabeth Cole…that threw her own child into the Thames (London, 1708), 4–5.Google Scholar

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70 ibid, 380–6, 397. See also Hay, Douglas, ‘The class composition of the palladium of liberty: trial jurors in the eighteenth century’, in Cockburn, J. S. and Green, Thomas A. eds., Twelve good men and true: the criminal trial jury in England, 1200–1800 (Princeton, 1988), 305–57.Google Scholar

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74 Quoted in Baldick, Robert, The duel: a history of duelling, 2nd edn (London, 1970), 71.Google Scholar

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77 For a rare exception where an accused murderer was acquitted by a London jury in 1736 after successfully performing the ordeal, see Weekly Miscellany, vol. CLXXI (27 Mar. 1736), 3.

78 Legal medicine was not taught at a British university until 1821, and the first significant original textbook in English – George Male's Epitome of juridical or forensic medicine – did not appear until 1816. Ambroise Paré's work of 1575 on the subject had been translated as How to make reports, and to embalme the dead in 1634, but this did not have a significant impact. On these developments and the early history of forensic medicine in general, see Forbes, Thomas Rogers, Surgeons at the Bailey: English forensic medicine to 1878 (New Haven, 1985), esp. ch. IGoogle Scholar his Crowner's quest, 42–3.

79 In general, surgeons and apothecaries gravitated towards better learning as the demand for their services increased; see Holmes, Geoffrey, Augustan England: professions, state and society, 1680–1730 (London, 1982), chs. 6–7Google Scholar, and Burnby, Juanita G. L., A study of the English apothecary from 1660 to 1760 (Medical History, Supplement III; London, 1983).Google ScholarPubMed

80 PRO, ASSI 45/21/3/128, and 21/3/147.

81 Holdsworth, , History of English law, vol. III, 650Google Scholar; Herrup, , Common peace, 160Google Scholar; Howell, ed., State trials, vol. VI, 770.Google Scholar

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87 Proceedings … in the Old Bayly the 17th and 18th of this instant July, 1717 (London, 1717), 4.Google Scholar

88 Howell, ed., State trials, vol. II, 1031.Google Scholar Murder indictments were often insufficient at law because they ‘contained too little of the kinds of fact upon which legal distinctions rest’ (Baker, ‘Refinement of English criminal jurisprudence’, 23).

89 Medical advances also meant that the lives of the victims might be saved, preventing the charge being murder, and enabling them to testify and, similarly, suicidal murderers might be revived to stand trial (Beattie, , Crime and the courts, 111n.).Google Scholar In 1731 a woman who cut the throats of her children and then herself was saved by the skill of a surgeon (British Spy (8 Apr. 1731), 3).Google Scholar

90 Grub-street Journal (21 Jan. 1731), 2.Google Scholar

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92 PRO, SP 36/11/68.

93 PRO, SP 36/30/53–4, 82–3, 92–3. For a similar case from the Buckingham assizes in 1728, where the judge stated that although ‘the Statute makes the concealment of the Death evidence of the Murder’, he conceded that concealment did not carry the same degree of guilt as wilful murder (SP 36/5/86 36/6/94–6).

94 This is not to say that midwives were never learned in such matters, only that they held the lowest status among medical practitioners, especially when ‘man-midwives’ began to compete in the eighteenth century. In this case, the midwife applied medical reasoning of her own, arguing that ‘if the Child had been born dead the Vessells of Life which she Explained to be the Navel string would have been perished whereas they were firm’ (PRO, SP 36/30/54). On midwives, see Pelling, Margaret and Webster, Charles, ‘Medical practitioners’, in Webster, Charles ed., Health, medicine and mortality in the sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979), 179–80Google Scholar; Forbes, T. R., The midwfe and the witch (New Haven, 1966), esp. pp. 112–13, 139, 155Google Scholar; Harley, David, ‘Ignorant midwives–a persistent stereotype’, The Society for the Social History of Medicine Bulletin 28 (1981), 6–9Google Scholar; Holmes, , Augustan England, 82.Google Scholar

95 In one of the earliest homicide trials at which professional medical testimony was formally used as evidence – the trial of the early of Pembroke in 1678 – the jury rejected the surgeon's opinion that the victim's death had been caused by drinking and in 1734 a judge rejected a Huntingdon jury's guilty verdict on a woman for poisoning her husband, arguing that the surgeon's toxicological analysis was entirely negative, see Forbes, , Surgeons at the Bailey, 46–7Google Scholar, PRO, SP 36/32/29. For other cases where judges and juries clashed over verdicts in homicide trials see PRO, SP 35/11/39(1718) and 36/35/30 (1735).

96 Shapiro, , Probability and certainty, 177, 183.Google Scholar See Bushell 's Case (1670); see Howell, ed., State trials, vol. VI, 1011–12.Google Scholar

97 PRO, PL 27/2, part II (unnumbered fos., 1691–1750, Deposition of Charles Leigh, 1695).

98 Forbes, , Surgeons at the Bailey, 3.Google Scholar As Michael MacDonald and Terence Murphy have written of suicide inquests, ‘a verdict based on forensic evidence was a conjecture’ (Sleepless souls, 227). In the 1740s a Lancashire doctor was embarrassed to learn that a woman he had recently diagnosed as suffering from ‘the Gravel’ – a urinary complaint – had in fact been pregnant and was charged with infanticide; see Brockbank, W. and Kenworthy, F. eds., The diary of Richard Kay, 1716–51 of Baldingstone (Chetham Society, 16 Manchester, 1968), 121–2, 125.Google Scholar In 1721 a Durham woman, having disposed of her illegitimate child, pretended to neighbours that she had ‘an Ill ffitt of ye Gravell & Ague’ (PRO, DURH 17/2, Assizes 1721 (unnumbered fos., Evidence against Anne Thompson)).

99 Select trials, vol. I, 57–9 vol. IV, 96.Google Scholar Jonathan Barry has argued that the history of medicine cannot be understood in terms of science displacing quackery and magic, but rather in terms of patients' needs, choices and expectations; see his ‘Piety and the patient: medicine and religion in eighteenth-century Bristol’, in Porter, Roy ed., Patients and practitioners: lay perceptions of medicine in pre-industrial society (Cambridge, 1985), 145–75.Google Scholar

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101 The first original work in English on forensic medicine Hunter's, William ‘On the uncertainty of the signs of murder in the case of bastard children’ (1783)Google Scholar, discussed the increasing difficulty of proving infanticide; see Forbes, , Surgeons at the Bailey, 3, 97.Google Scholar

102 Proceedings … in the Old Bayly the 16th, 17th, 18th, 20th of January (London, 1735), 24–5.Google Scholar For another case of a woman who threw her baby from a window immediately after birth, see Cockburn, J. S. ed., Calendar of assize records: Kent indictments, Elizabeth I (London, 1979), no. 11.Google Scholar

103 Gent. Mag. (Nov. 1774), 511.Google Scholar On such tests in general, see Brittain, R. P., ‘The hydrostatic and similar tests of live birth: a historical review’, Medical-Legal Journal 31 (1963), 189–94CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, Forbes, , Surgeons at the Bailey, ch. 6.Google Scholar One objection to the hydrostatic test was that the lungs of the corpse could also be inflated naturally with the gases produced by decomposition (Forbes, , ‘Crowner's quest’, 45–7).Google Scholar

104 See Forbes, , Surgeons at the Bailey, ch. 8.Google Scholar Murder using overdoses of medicine was especially hard to prove, for example, laudanum as a sedative for children; see Havard, , Detection of secret homicide, 53–64.Google Scholar The first English work on poisoning, Mead's, RichardA mechanical account of poisons in several essays, appeared in 1702Google Scholar; it is significant that a full third of Male's Epitome of juridicial or forensic medicine (1816) dealt with poisonsGoogle Scholar; see Forbes, , Surgeons at the Bailey, 4, 124–5.Google Scholar

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109 Historians disagree as to levels of harmony in early modern English communities. David Underdown detects ‘the essentially co-operative nature of the village community’ in the earlier seventeenth century, where Lawrence Stone sees a picture of endemic malice; see Underdown, , Revel, riot and rebellion, 13n., and Stone, The fan7ily, sex and marriage in England (London, 1977), 95–9.Google Scholar For the most elegant and balanced impression, see Wrightson, , English society, ch. 2.Google Scholar For a dated but still useful basic outline of the structure of government and administration in local communities, see Trotter, Eleanor, Seventeenth century life in the country parish (Cambridge, 1919).Google Scholar

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114 Thomas, , Religion and the decline of magic, 93, 128–9.Google Scholar For treatises which discuss nature in specifically providential terms, see Ray, John, The wisdom of God manifested in the works of the creation (London, 1691)Google Scholar, Derham, William, Physico-theology: or a demonstration of the being and attributes of God from his works of creation (London, 1713).Google Scholar Both are reprinted in Goodman, D. C. ed., Science and religious belief 1600–1900 (Milton Keynes, 1973), 181–219, 229–41.Google Scholar The theme of the relationship between God's agency and the natural world recurs throughout this anthology; Ray, for example, suggested that God used plagues of insects to punish sinful nations (ibid., 219). In the nineteenth century, a distinction was still made between direct providences which governed the mechanisms of the universe and the more specific warnings and punishments of special providences; the Irish famine of 1845–1847 was, in the eyes of many, an example of the latter; see Hilton, Boyd, The age of atonement: the influence of evangelicalism on social and economic thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford, 1988), 109–12, 210–11 and passim.Google Scholar

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