Early modern law enforcement and punishment

Continuity: there was still no police force. Law enforcement depended on local people:

• Parish constables: part-time and unpaid, they arrested suspects and kept order.
• Town watchmen: in towns, watchmen patrolled the streets at night, carrying a lantern, and could arrest suspects. Many were old or poorly paid, and they were often mocked.
• The hue and cry was still used.
• Justices of the Peace became more important. They met four times a year to judge cases.

Change: towns were growing, so the old system of everyone knowing everyone else worked less well.

Continuity: punishments were still public and harsh, to deter others.

• Corporal punishment: the stocks, the pillory and whipping were used for minor crimes, including vagabondage.
• Capital punishment: hanging for serious crimes, such as murder and serious theft. Heretics could be burned, and traitors faced the most brutal execution.

Executions were public events, often watched by large crowds.

In the early 17th century, a new punishment was introduced: transportation. Instead of being executed, some convicts were sent to England's colonies in North America, where they had to work, usually for several years.

Causes:

• it was a less harsh alternative to hanging, for crimes that did not seem to deserve death
• the colonies needed workers
• it removed criminals from England.

Significance: this was the first major new kind of punishment for centuries. It would grow much bigger in the 18th century.

From the later 17th century, Parliament began to make more and more crimes, especially crimes against property, punishable by death. By the 1680s, around 50 crimes carried the death penalty, and the number kept rising in the 18th century. This system later became known as the Bloody Code.

Causes: Parliament was made up of wealthy landowners, who wanted to protect their property. With no police force, they believed that the threat of hanging was the best deterrent.

Significance: the Bloody Code shows how the people who made the laws shaped what counted as a serious crime.