Book review: Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: From Alchemists to Zealots

 

Although witches, or the fear of them, date to Biblical times, it wasn’t until 1542 that the first English statute on witchcraft was enacted by King Henry VIII (1491-1547). His son Edward VI (1537-1553) repealed it, but then Elizabeth I (1533-1603) put her own 1563 statute on the books. She divided witchcraft into greater and lesser crimes. Invoking evil spirits or killing someone through sorcery was punishable by death, while injuring people or property meant a year of imprisonment and time in the pillory. Second acts meant death. However, it was during the Stuart dynasty when witchcraft accusations ran rampant, since King James I (1566-1625) not only added his own statutes, he wrote a book on the subject.

English laws and the penalties for breaking them were harsh. While the Tudor era ended before the Winthrop fleet arrived on the shores of Massachusetts Bay Colony, some of the crueler penalties were not abolished until the 19th century. Fortunately, the Puritan colonists created the first 100 rules of 1641's Body of Liberties based on the Bible—and used more humane treatment compared to what they left behind in England.

In 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, however, when Giles Corey refused to enter a plea in court, he was pressed to death for it. This gruesome punishment, also known as Peine forte et dure, was only used once stateside. But it was not abolished in England until 1772. In fact, in English courts the accused was not given the option of pleading “not guilty” until 1827. 

Other examples include a thief who steals bread could get a hand cut off, while a vagrant could get branded with the letter V. Some punishments were designed for maximum humiliation, with the crowds throwing rotten foodstuff at convicts in the cart or at the pillory. That was tame compared to being drawn and quartered, then hanged—again, with crowd participation.

If you’re looking for more details on Crime and Punishment in Tudor England, pick up the new book by April Taylor. The author provides background information on lawmaking, prisons, and courts systems—and 23 pages of punishments, from beheading to whipping. In the second half of the book, crimes from sumptuary laws to treason are covered in alphabetical order, each followed by case studies. You’ll learn what evidence could be used against the accused, what tortures could be applied to gain a confession, and even the strategies used for the criminal’s demise.

Taylor turns crime and punishment in the Tudor period into a fascinating read, while the alpha-order format makes it easy to browse through or do research.

Prerelease book provided by NetGalley and Pen & Sword History for review consideration.

Understanding Rose's story by reading a book

Recently, I've been doing research on a friends's family. His grandmother Rose was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in her early 40s, around the time when her only child was graduating from high school. The disease went into remission for a short while but by the time Rose was in her late 50s, her husband no longer could provide the specialized care she needed. Rose moved into the local nursing home, where her husband visited her every day. 

Whenever her out-of-state grandsons visited, Rose always reminded them that she once was a registered nurse. Clearly, her status as an RN meant a lot to her, especially since the boys only saw her disabled body lying in a hospital bed in a depressing nursing home. Unlike some of her peers, Rose graduated from high school and was accepted as a nursing student at a hospital 30 miles away. It was one of the few careers open to women at the time. The hospital, like many others, expected much of their female students. Besides studying, for three years the nursing students worked at the hospital before graduating. Six months later, the trained nurses had to pass a board-certified examination in order to become a Registered Nurse. Of the 102 nursing students, Rose was one of 33 who received an honor seal on her RN certificate for having an average grade of 90 percent or more in all subjects. 

Rose had fallen in love with her future husband long before she became a nurse. I know because I have a box of letters that she she wrote to her hometown beau during the entire time she lived in the hospital students' dormitory 30 miles away. Yet Rose put off marriage and having children to follow her dream of being a nurse. After all, one of the hospital rules (and other institutions like it) was that anyone who marries while in training was expelled from the nursing program. One year after she was officially an RN, Rose married.

Book review: The Shortest History of Europe

Unless you're just collecting names and dates, your genealogy research becomes richer the more you know about history, religion, and culture. Putting your ancestors in context not only helps you understand their lives within their own times, but gives you better direction on what to look for in sources and what to research next. 

If you need a refresher, check out The Shortest History series published by The Experiment LLC. Current books in the series include Europe, England, Germany, Israel and Palestine, India, China, and Greece, with more in the works. Promoted as “Thousands of years of history. One riveting, fast-paced read,” the series is written by expert historians who are also international bestselling authors.

The title says it all: The Shortest History of Europe: How Conquest, Culture, and Religion Forged a Continent—A Retelling of Our Times. This is not a sprawling narrative filled with name-dropping and stringent timelines. Instead, John Hirst’s narrative explores how Greek and Roman learning, Christianity, and German warrior culture created modern Europe. 

At first, it’s hard to absorb how only three elements determined the course of European history. But Hirst shows how all the monumental events happened because of conquest, culture, and religion. 

For example, the Catholic Church banished or executed great thinkers like Copernicus and Galileo because their interpretations of how the universe worked contradicted the Greco-Roman view. Martin Luther and his followers wanted to return Christianity to its basic form—the Bible—without the Greco-Roman trappings and started the Reformation. Many years later, Isaac Newton and Einstein explained their scientific discoveries by following the Greek theory that answers would be “simple, mathematical, and logical.”

Throughout the book and its many revolutions, Hirst synthesizes European history in a way that went beyond my college classes, yet is simple and accessible.