CRIME, LAW AND ORDER IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

Abstract

Recently the study of crime has assumed the status of a boom industry, giving rise to symposia, special issues of scholarly journals, regular national and international conferences and numerous publications. Articles, essay collections, and book length monographs provide an impression of a co ordinated and rich field of study. There are interdisciplinary debates about concepts, sources, methods, procedures and findings. But the proliferation of publications and research reveals a piecemeal, ad hoc and divided state of affairs. Bad temper and epistemological disputes abound within and between disciplines. Contributions are of highly varying quality and type; rarely are they knitted together into a comprehensive whole. Studies of presentments, court records and examinations of literary evidence and life histories are increasingly being devoted to the study of the micro-historical. With few exceptions, these are not resulting in stimulating generalisations about law, crime and power.1 Despite much activity and some advancement, the study of crime in early modern England reflects in some ways this state of affairs. It seems to be unsure of its intellectual pedigree and so is cautious and tentative. Perhaps understandably so: the field is barely 20 years old (Bailey, 1980; Chapman, 1981; Ives, 1982; Sharpe, 1982, 1984). Nevertheless, much has been published and enough ideas have been sufficiently formulated to allow one to wonder whether we are not involved in what Fernand Braudel