The trial of Thomas Frogbrook: bestiality and the law in an early sixteenth-century English rural community

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the gap between legal theory and practice regarding bestiality in late medieval England. It focuses on a microhistorical analysis of a 1520 trial heard in Chichester consistory court, integrating other archival documents, legislation and legal commentaries to illustrate local and national contexts. I argue first that personal enmity rather than a moralizing agenda was the primary motivating factor in this case, and second that this trial illustrates the broader limitations of English church courts and the system of canon law in affecting popular attitudes to ‘unnatural’ intercourse and in the suppression of such acts.