Public Punishments for Crime Public Punishments for Crime Author Tori Cromer Author Aubrie Jones Author Kate McPherson Supervising Editor Kate McPherson Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globablink Research Internship

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

Intellectual copyright in this entry is held by Kate McPherson on behalf of the contributors. Copyright on the TEI-XML markup is held by the University of Victoria on behalf of the LEMDO Team. The content and TEI-XML markup in this file are licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license. This file is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and /or data; (2) this availability statement must remain in the file; (3) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (4) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited.

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Tori Cromer, Aubrie Jones, and Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Editor A person, family, or organization contributing to a resource by revising or elucidating the content, e.g., adding an introduction, notes, or other critical matter. An editor may also prepare a resource for production, publication, or distribution. For major revisions, adaptations, etc., that substantially change the nature and content of the original work, resulting in a new work, see author. LEMDO uses the general term editor only in edition metadata and only to indicate when a person is responsible for editing all parts of an edition. Otherwise, use the more granular terms to describe the precise nature of the editorial role. Supervising Editor An editor who supervises the work of a student editor. Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Daily Life Law Punishment Social Order Trials Gender Obedience Education Benefit of Clergy Published file. Updated metadata. Added respStmts for all three authors. proofed Review of article finished. updated author respStmt. Created File. Michael Best 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.

 Tori Cromer Tori Cromer

Tori Cromer was a student at Utah Valley University.

 Leah Hamby 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.

 Navarra Houldin 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.

 Janelle Jenstad 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.

 Aubrie Jones Aubrie Jones

Aubrie Jones was a student at Utah Valley University.

 Kate McPherson 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.

 LEMDO Team 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 https://www.uvic.ca/

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 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

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. 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 England The 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/.