Moral Crimes in Early Modern England: Ecclesiastical Law and Civil Law

Three Court Systems

Para1In early modern England, three legal systems operated simultaneously. The first type of court was the ecclesiastical courts, or church courts, which dealt with moral offenses such as adultery, bigamy, prostitution, drunkenness, and failure to attend church. The archdeacon’s court, which met once every three weeks in regional towns, depended on individuals to report the illicit activities of their neighbors. This kind of community policing meant the government depended on nosy neighbors.
Para2People accused of these sorts of moral offenses could be acquitted if they could collect the testimony of respected local citizens that served as character references. The ecclesiastical courts punished convicted offenders with public shaming rituals such as the pillory (a post to which an offended would be chained or bound) or having to stand in the marketplace or in the church door clad as a penitent, wearing only a white sheet.
Para3The second type of court concerned offenses of secular or civil law, with violent crimes such as theft, assault, rape, and murder tried here. These courts handed out physical punishments for these violent crimes, including whipping, branding, and hanging for the most serious offenders. Civil courts also dealt with financial crimes such as fraud or broken contracts, and they were concerned with handing out monetary damages to the injured party.
Para4The final type of court was concerned only with the monarch, both with financial obligations and issues of treason.

Crime, Sodomy, and Sin

Para5Most sexual offences such as adultery and fornication in early modern England were handled by the ecclesiastical courts. The major exception was the crime of sodomy (also called buggery), the punishment for which was made more severe immediately after the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, mainly as a means of discrediting the displaced monks. Courts considered sodomy a kind of criminal heresy, an offence against the divine and civil order like bestiality. It was considered largely unspeakable. Conviction was punishable by death, all property of the convicted person to be confiscated.
Para6However, the crime of sodomy was very seldom prosecuted. The laws against it were designed more to discredit the celibate male priesthood of the dissolved Catholic Church in England than as a serious method of enforcing the moral norm of heterosexuality. Lesbianism was neither written about nor legislated against.

Moral Crime and the Theater

Para7Puritans suspected the theater of being a site that might encourage abominations such as sodomy, since boy actors mingled with the morally suspect adult male actors. The puritan writer Philip Stubbes worried greatly about the moral degradation that might happen to people who attended the increasingly popular theaters in early modern London:
Mark the flocking and running to Theatres and Curtains the first two theatres to be built in London, daily and hourly […] where such wanton gestures, such bawdy speeches, such laughing and fleering, such kissing and bussing, such clipping and culling, such glancing of wanton eyes and the like is used as is wonderful to behold. Then, these goodly pageants being done, every mate sorts to his mate […] and in their secret conclaves (covertly) they play the sodomites or worse. (The Anatomy of Abuses, 1583)

Claudio’s Offense

Para8Courtship and marriage fell primarily under ecclesiastical law in early modern England. Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing is a perfect example of the laws of marriage as well as the harmful effects of interfering neighbors. When Claudio believes the accusations made about his fiancee Hero, he waits until the wedding ceremony to announce them to everyone and shame Hero in the worst way possible. He declares her unchaste, or in his words, She knows the heat of a luxurious bed. Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty (4.1.40–41). All this takes place because of an evil scheme by the bastard Don John to ruin Hero’s reputation. Borachio, Don John’s henchman, confesses, I have deceived you even your very eyes. Don John your brother incensed me to slander the Lady Hero, how you were brought into the orchard and saw me court Margaret in Hero’s garments, how you disgraced her when you should marry her (5.1.245–249).
Para9In recompense for his offenses against Hero, whom he believes has died after being accused by him, Claudio engages in public penitence, although not one designated by church courts. He elaborately mourns Hero’s supposed death and even agrees to marry her cousin. He engages in forms of public display and restorative justice that would have been familiar to early modern audiences.

Key Print Sources

Bevington, David. Much Ado About Nothing. The Necessary Shakespeare. David Bevington. 3rd ed. Pearson Longman, 2009, pp. 113–149.
Bredbeck, Gregory. Sodomy and Interpretation: Marlowe to Milton. Cornell University Press, 1991.
Curran, Kevin. Shakespeare and Judgment. Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500–1800. Harper Perennial, 1983.

Key Online Sources

5 Facts About Marriage, Love and Sex in Shakespeare’s England. Oxford University Press Blog. 30 Jan. 2016, https://blog.oup.com/2016/01/marriage-love-sex-shakespeares-england/.
Best, Michael. Child Actors. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/stage/acting/childactors.html. 6 Mar. 2023.
Best, Michael. The Ecclesiastical Law: Nosy Neighbours. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/history/crime%20and%20the%20law/ecclesiastical.html. Accessed 14 Nov. 2018.
Best, Michael. Order in the Sexes. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/ideas/order/sexes.html. Accessed 6 Mar. 2023.

Prosopography

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Kristi Nemelka

Kristi Nemelka was a student at Utah Valley University.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title Moral Crimes in Early Modern England: Ecclesiastical Law and Civil Law
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
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By Kristi Nemelka, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
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Utah Valley University
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