Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Early Modern Period
- Highway
Robbery
- Use of highways or roads
with the intention to rob
usually on horseback and
often violent
- Dick Turpin
- Early life
- Born in Essex 1705
- Butcher & Poacher
- Joined Gregory Gang
- Many burglaries
- Some members caught
- Gang split
- Became a highwayman
- Legend
- Product of media - books & poety
- Horse called Black Bess
- Rode from London to York in a day
- Romantic gentleman
- Ruthless criminal
- Focused on lonesome travellers
- Escaped to York
- Lived under the alias John Palmer
- Identified by handwriting
- Hung for his crimes
- Killed at least one person
- Causes
- Media
- Books, poetry, pamphlets etc.
glamourised, romanticised and
exaggerated the crime
- Travel
- Increased travel - more
opportunities to rob people
- Poverty & Wealth
- Rich merchants travelled through
England carrying large amounts of
money
- Feared crime in late 17th
& early 18th centuries
- Punishable by
death
- Hanging
- Vagrancy
- Wandering the
country without a
settled job or home
- Sturdy Beggars
- Tricked people into
giving them money
- Usually involved
pretending to be ill
and other ways of
conning people out of
money
- The Counterfeit Crank -
Dressed in old clothes would
pretend to have fits & often
sucked soap to appear to be
frothing at the mouth. The
worse it looked the more
money he hoped to get as
people felt sorry for him.
- Other types - The Bristler,
The Counterfeit Crank, The
Baretop Trickster, The
Clapper Dungeon, Tom
o'Bedlam
- Vagabonds/ Vagrants
- Causes
- Media
- Pamphlets warned
people to avoid vagrants
- Religion
- Puritans believed the everyone
should work hard so they had
no time to be tempted to
commit sins so they saw
vagrants as a problem
- Travel
- Restrictions were lifted allowing people to
travel anywhere
- Poverty & Wealth
- Increased poverty meant poor
people searched to find jobs
- Government & Law Makers
- Edward VI was Puritan and hated
laziness - "When they appear you
shall forthwith arrest them as as
rebels & open traitors to us & our
realm they are to be without delay
hanged & executed openly to the
terror of others."
- Population Increase
- Not enough jobs for people e.g.
there was a decline in the cloth
industry at the time
- Lots travelled to London in hope of
finding a job there
- Could be whipped, fined, sent back to
hometown etc. but a third conviction was
death by hanging
- Witchcraft
- The crime of
using
supernatural
powers usually to
curse or harm
- James I extremely
scared by witches
- Wrote a book on witchcraft
- 90% were
women
- Matthew Hopkins
- Witch Hunter General
- Responsible for the death of 300
women
- Hunted, put on trial,
collected evidence & often
sentenced witches to death
by the authorities
- Used methods of torture
to et confessions from
witches
- Made a pamphlet 'The
Discovery of Witches'
- Trial
- Tortured
- Deprived of sleep
- Made to walk
- Ducking
- Dunked into water
- Innocent if sunk
- Guilty if floated as
Devil was holding
them up
- Many
'confessed to
end torture
- Causes
- Religion
- They were believed to be
slaves of the Devil. Puritans
& other Protestants
preached that the Devil &
his servants were trying to
take good Christians
- Government & Law Makers
- James I was afraid of the
prospect of witches
- Punishment death
by hanging contrary
to popular belief
- Heresy
- Mary I "Bloody
Mary"
- 300 burnt
- James I
- Imprisons 400
- Continues Catholic Prosecution
- Gunpowder Plot
- 1605
- Group of Catholic noblemen
- Hung Drawn & Quartered
- Plot to kill king and replace
him with Catholic Monarch
- Treason
- Guy Fawkes
- Tortured on the rack until he gave
the names of co-conspirators
- Hung Drawn & Quartered
- Catholics had been
prosecuted since
Henry VIII's break
with Rome
- 1604 brought in further
anti-catholic laws
- Causes
- Religion - Beliefs & Ideas
- New religions
introduced to England
- Government & Law Makers
- Being of a different religion
was a threat to their authority
- Travel
- New religions
introduced to England
- Being of a different
religion to the monarch
at the time
- Not being
protestant
under James I
- Heretics
- Poaching
- Stealing wild creatures - birds,
mammals or fish - form those
who own the land they live in
- Causes
- Poverty & Wealth
- Poor didn't have enough
money to buy food
- Taxes
- Increased taxes so poor
couldn't afford things
- Smuggling
- Bringing goods into the country
without paying tax on them
- Punishment was
death by hanging
- Occurred along Devon &
Cornwall coast
- Coves
- Away from London
- Unregulated
- Causes
- Taxes
- In the 18th century the government
increased taxes by 30% on luxury
goods
- Travel
- Increase in transport meant increase in
smuggling as small boats were used to
transport the goods
- Poverty & Wealth
- People couldn't afford to pay the tax on
items
- Smuggling paid well
e.g. in one night a
smuggler could earn
seven times a farm
workers wage
- People needed jobs especially
after decline in cloth industry
lead to a lot of jobs lost
- Government posters
intended to decline the
crime encouraged more
people into it