Convicted 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.

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.

The 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

Certain 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

The 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

A 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

Women 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

People 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 notes that Harlots and their mates are punished by carting, dunking, and doing of open penance in sheets, in churches and market streets.

Branding

Thieves 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.

But 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

Whipping, 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

Being 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. . St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Kermode, Jennifer, and Garthine Walker. . University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Kesselring, K.J. . , vol. 60, no. 3, 2021, pp. 511–533. Landau, Norma. . Cambridge University Press, 2002 McMullan, John L. . Rutgers University Press, 1984. Sharpe, J.A. . Longman Group, 1984.

Key Online Sources . Eds. C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1911. . http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/acts-ordinances-interregnum. Accessed 19 Jun. 2023. Amussen, Susan Dwyer. . , vol. 34, no. 1, 1995, pp. 1–34. , https://www.jstor.org/stable/175807. Accessed 19 Jun. 2023. Best, Michael. . . . University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/history/crime%20and%20the%20law/stocks.html. Accessed 12 Oct. 2018. . . https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z3jb3j6/revision/4. Accessed 28 Feb. 2023. Harrison, William. . 1954. . https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/crime-and-punishment-elizabethan-england. Accessed 19 Jun. 2023. Picard, Liza. . . 19 Dec. 2019. . 15 Mar. 2016. https://brewminate.com/crime-and-punishment-in-elizabethan-england/.