Crime in early modern England

Continuity: most crimes were still against property, especially petty theft, and against the person.

Change: England was changing fast:

• the Reformation: from the 1530s, the official religion changed several times
• the population grew, prices rose, and many people could not find work
• Tudor and Stuart monarchs wanted to control their subjects more closely.

Consequence: crimes against authority, such as heresy and treason, became more important, and new crimes were created: vagabondage and witchcraft.

Heresy is holding religious beliefs that go against the official religion. As the official religion changed, so did who counted as a heretic:

• Henry VIII broke away from the Pope and became Head of the Church of England in 1534.
• Edward VI (1547–53) made England Protestant.
• Mary I (1553–58) made England Catholic again, and around 280 Protestants were burned for heresy.
• Elizabeth I (1558–1603) restored a Protestant Church.

Treason, plotting against the monarch, was also widened. Because the monarch now led the Church, religious opposition could count as treason too.

Significance: the punishments were severe and public, to deter religious opposition.

Vagabonds were people with no home or work, who wandered from place to place, begging or looking for work.

Causes: population growth, rising prices and unemployment; the closing of the monasteries (1536–40), which had given charity; and soldiers returning from war with no work.

Attitudes: people distinguished between the deserving poor, who could not work because they were old, sick or disabled, and the undeserving poor, who were able to work but were thought to be lazy. The undeserving poor were feared as a threat to order.

New laws: Tudor laws punished able-bodied vagabonds harshly, for example with whipping and branding.

Witchcraft, using magic to cause harm with the Devil's help, was made a crime by Parliament:

Causes: most people believed in the Devil and in witches. Religious change created fear and uncertainty, and King James I had written a book about witches, Daemonologie (1597). In hard times, people looked for someone to blame for illness, deaths or failed crops.

Most people accused were women, often poor and old.