Early Modern Period

Highway Robbery
1. Use of highways or roads with the intention to rob usually on horseback and often violent
2. Dick Turpin
  1. Early life
    1. Born in Essex 1705
    2. Butcher & Poacher
    3. Joined Gregory Gang
      1. Many burglaries
      2. Some members caught
        Gang split
  2. Became a highwayman
  3. Legend
    1. Product of media - books & poety
    2. Horse called Black Bess
    3. Rode from London to York in a day
    4. Romantic gentleman
  4. Ruthless criminal
  5. Focused on lonesome travellers
  6. Escaped to York
    1. Lived under the alias John Palmer
    2. Identified by handwriting
      1. Hung for his crimes
  7. Killed at least one person
3. Causes
  1. Media
    1. Books, poetry, pamphlets etc. glamourised, romanticised and exaggerated the crime
  2. Travel
    1. Increased travel - more opportunities to rob people
  3. Poverty & Wealth
    1. Rich merchants travelled through England carrying large amounts of money
4. Feared crime in late 17th & early 18th centuries
5. Punishable by death
  1. Hanging
Vagrancy
1. Wandering the country without a settled job or home
2. Sturdy Beggars
  1. Tricked people into giving them money
  2. Usually involved pretending to be ill and other ways of conning people out of money
  3. 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.
    1. Other types - The Bristler, The Counterfeit Crank, The Baretop Trickster, The Clapper Dungeon, Tom o'Bedlam
3. Vagabonds/ Vagrants
4. Causes
  1. Media
    1. Pamphlets warned people to avoid vagrants
  2. Religion
    1. 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
  3. Travel
    1. Restrictions were lifted allowing people to travel anywhere
  4. Poverty & Wealth
    1. Increased poverty meant poor people searched to find jobs
  5. Government & Law Makers
    1. 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."
  6. Population Increase
    1. Not enough jobs for people e.g. there was a decline in the cloth industry at the time
5. Lots travelled to London in hope of finding a job there
6. Could be whipped, fined, sent back to hometown etc. but a third conviction was death by hanging
Witchcraft
1. The crime of using supernatural powers usually to curse or harm
2. James I extremely scared by witches
  1. Wrote a book on witchcraft
3. 90% were women
4. Matthew Hopkins
  1. Witch Hunter General
  2. Responsible for the death of 300 women
  3. Hunted, put on trial, collected evidence & often sentenced witches to death by the authorities
  4. Used methods of torture to et confessions from witches
  5. Made a pamphlet 'The Discovery of Witches'
5. Trial
  1. Tortured
    1. Deprived of sleep
    2. Made to walk
  2. Ducking
    1. Dunked into water
      1. Innocent if sunk
      2. Guilty if floated as Devil was holding them up
  3. Many 'confessed to end torture
6. Causes
  1. Religion
    1. They were believed to be slaves of the Devil. Puritans & other Protestants preached that the Devil & his servants were trying to take good Christians
  2. Government & Law Makers
    1. James I was afraid of the prospect of witches
7. Punishment death by hanging contrary to popular belief
Heresy
1. Mary I "Bloody Mary"
  1. 300 burnt
  2. James I
    1. Imprisons 400
    2. Continues Catholic Prosecution
      1. 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
      2. Catholics had been prosecuted since Henry VIII's break with Rome
      3. 1604 brought in further anti-catholic laws
2. Causes
  1. Religion - Beliefs & Ideas
    1. New religions introduced to England
  2. Government & Law Makers
    1. Being of a different religion was a threat to their authority
  3. Travel
    1. New religions introduced to England
3. Being of a different religion to the monarch at the time
  1. Not being protestant under James I
4. Heretics
Poaching
1. Stealing wild creatures - birds, mammals or fish - form those who own the land they live in
2. Causes
  1. Poverty & Wealth
    1. Poor didn't have enough money to buy food
  2. Taxes
    1. Increased taxes so poor couldn't afford things
Smuggling
1. Bringing goods into the country without paying tax on them
2. Punishment was death by hanging
3. Occurred along Devon & Cornwall coast
  1. Coves
  2. Away from London
  3. Unregulated
4. Causes
  1. Taxes
    1. In the 18th century the government increased taxes by 30% on luxury goods
  2. Travel
    1. Increase in transport meant increase in smuggling as small boats were used to transport the goods
  3. Poverty & Wealth
    1. People couldn't afford to pay the tax on items
    2. Smuggling paid well e.g. in one night a smuggler could earn seven times a farm workers wage
    3. People needed jobs especially after decline in cloth industry lead to a lot of jobs lost
5. Government posters intended to decline the crime encouraged more people into it

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Early Modern Period

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	Created by laila vlietinck over 9 years ago