Public Punishments for Crime
Para1Convicted criminals in early modern England were subject to a variety of physical
and social punishments for offenses ranging from minor ones such as begging to more
serious ones like fornication or slander. Most sentences involving punishment were
handed down by a Justice of the Peace for standard crimes or by the ecclesiastical
courts for moral ones. More serious crimes, such as poaching, theft, or assault meant
the offender was likely tried by the quarterly, regional courts called the Assizes,
which rendered serious punishments such as hanging.
Para2 Early modern punishments were typically swift and severe by today’s standards. They
frequently used public humiliation, such as being placed in the stocks (a device that
restrainted the offender in a wooden frame). Humiliation was intended to shame the
person for their crimes and serve as a warning to other moral transgrressors. This
type of punishment was often used against women who were prosecuted for crimes such
as prostitution or adultery. More severe physical punishments were also regulary applied,
including mutilations like branding, ear clipping, or amputation of a hand. Capital
punishment was frequent, with execution occuring most often by hanging.
Para3The most common punishment for felony crimes such as murder was execution, with the
height of executions taking place in the 17th century. During this period, approximately
one-third of felons were executed. Generally, executions were performed by public
hanging as a way of creating a spectacle to deter future criminals. In London, public
hangings of convicted felons occured monthly.
Gender Differences in Punishment
Para4Certain types of punishment were administered exclusively to women. When humiliation
was the judgement, only women would be ducked in the pond (where a woman was seated on a chair and dipped into a pond or river). This and similar
other water-based punishments were also used in witchcraft trials to assess guilt.
A study of homicide trials during this time found that only accused men were branded,
though both men and women were sentenced to hanging.
The Stocks
Para5The stocks (think stockings) was a wood and metal contraption that restrained the offender by the ankles. The
offender was then left in a public place, such as a town square, at the mercy of passersby,
who would pelt them with verbal insults, or even kicking or spitting on them. Boys
often took off the offender’s shoes and tickled their feet in a kind of gruesome game.
The Pillory
Para6A similar but harsher punishment was the pillory, which trapped the person’s head
and wrists, forcing them to stand. Those who gathered around the stocks or pillory
found sport in making the offender’s experience as terrible as possible. They would
throw animal excrement, rotten food, mud, and dead animals. As part of their punishment
in the pillory, some offenders were also sentenced to further punishment by whipping,
branding, or having an ear cut off or an ear nailed to the pillory, which was called
(cropping).
Bridles and Branks
Para7Women who abused others, such as committing slander, or women who were verbally rebellious
and labeled as scolds might be sentenced to wear a scold’s bridle or branks. These iron cages were fitted around the offender’s head, with a bar that suppressed
the tongue, and then locked down. The offender would likely have to parade through
the town streets or stand in the market square wearing the device for a few hours.
Carting
Para8People found guilty of some crimes, including prostitution or fornication, were carted, or dragged stumbling behind a cart through town with their hands tied. William Harrison’s
1587 Description of England notes that
Harlots and their mates are punished by carting, dunking, and doing of open penance in sheets, in churches and market streets.
Branding
Para9Thieves were often branded, particularly on the flesh of the thumb. This was the punishment
for a first offense, so that future offenses could be punished much more severely,
including by hanging. Women were seldom branded.
Para10But even the playwright Ben Jonson, who killed a fellow actor in a duel and escaped
hanging by pleading benefit of clergy (the ability to read in Latin, and thus be tried by the less punitive ecclesiastical
court), was branded on the thumb, some say with a “T” for Tyburn, the location of the gallows in London, or an “M” for manslayer.
Whipping
Para11Whipping, like most physical and social punishments of the age, was reserved for the
common people. The offender would be tied to a pole in the market square or other
public locale and lashed across the back until they were bleeding, or they would be
driven through the streets while being whipped. Whipping was seen as especially humiliating
due to its connections with servitude and even slavery. Gentlemen, freedmen, and other
persons of status resisted sentences of whipping vigorously in the period.
Public Humiliation
Para12Being at the mercy of the public was both humiliating and dangerous. Some offenders
were even maimed or killed by over-enthusiastic spectators. Public humiliation was
viewed both typical and also as religiously just, particularly among fundamentalist
Protestants (Puritans). During the English Civil Wars in the middle of the 17th century, the government
codified this emphasis on the righteous use of public punishment, passing
An Ordinance, concerning the growth and spreading of Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies, and for setting apart a day of Publike Humiliation, to seeke Gods assistance for the suppressing and preventing the same.
Key Print Sources
Briggs, John. Crime and Punishment in England: An Introductory History. St. Martin’s Press, 1996.
Kermode, Jennifer, and Garthine Walker. Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England. University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Kesselring, K.J.
Law, Status, and the Lash: Judicial Whipping in Early Modern England.Journal of British Studies, vol. 60, no. 3, 2021, pp. 511–533.
Landau, Norma. Law, Crime and English Society, 1660–1830. Cambridge University Press, 2002
McMullan, John L. The Canting Crew: London’s Criminal Underworld, 1550–1700. Rutgers University Press, 1984.
Sharpe, J.A. Crime in Early Modern England 1550–1750. Longman Group, 1984.
Key Online Sources
Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660. Eds. C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1911. British History Online. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/acts-ordinances-interregnum. Accessed 19 Jun. 2023.
Amussen, Susan Dwyer.
Punishment, Discipline, and Power: The Social Meanings of Violence in Early Modern England.Journal of British Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, 1995, pp. 1–34. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/175807. Accessed 19 Jun. 2023.
Best, Michael.
Humiliation and Mutilation.Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/history/crime%20and%20the%20law/stocks.html. Accessed 12 Oct. 2018.
Crime and Punishment in Early Modern England.BBC Bitesize GCSE. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z3jb3j6/revision/4. Accessed 28 Feb. 2023.
Harrison, William.
Crime and Punishment in Elizabethan EnglandThe Renaissance. 1954. Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/crime-and-punishment-elizabethan-england. Accessed 19 Jun. 2023.
Picard, Liza.
Crime and Punishment in Elizabethan England.Brewminate. 19 Dec. 2019. The British Library. 15 Mar. 2016. https://brewminate.com/crime-and-punishment-in-elizabethan-england/.
Prosopography
Aubrie Jones
Aubrie Jones was a student at Utah Valley University.
Janelle Jenstad
Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director
of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.
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.
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.
Tori Cromer
Tori Cromer was a student at Utah Valley University.
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 | Public Punishments for Crime |
| Type of text | Critical |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | Early Modern England Encyclopedia |
| Source |
By Tori Cromer, Aubrie Jones, and Kate McPherson, 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 |
| Sponsor(s) |
Early Modern England EncyclopediaAnthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
|
| Encoding description | Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines |
| Document status | published, peer-reviewed |
| Funder(s) |
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globablink Research Internship |
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