Jacks, Knaves and Vagabonds

In this addition to his Crime History Series, students of English history will have heard how benefit of clergy and the ‘neck verse’ might avoid a hanging, but what of other stratagems such as down-valuing stolen goods, cruentation, chance medley, pious perjury or John at Death (a non-existent culprit blamed by the accused and treated by juries as real); all devices used to mitigate the all-pervading death-for-felony rule.

Together with other artifices deployed by courts to circumvent black-letter law the author also describes how poor, marginalised and illiterate citizens were those most likely to suffer unfairness, injustice and draconian punishment. He also describes the political intrigue and widescale corruption that were symptomatic of the era, alongside such diverse aspects as forfeiture of property, evidential ploys, the rise of the highwayman, religious persecution, witchcraft and infanticide crazes.

At a time of shifting allegiances — and as Crown, church, judges, magistrates and officials wrestled over jurisdiction, central or local control, ‘ungodly customs’, laws of convenience or malleable definitions — never perhaps were facts or law so expertly engineered to justify or defend often curious outcomes.

Part of Durston’s Crime History Series. Covers the entire Tudor era. Based on first-hand historical research. Fully referenced to hundreds of sources

Extract
‘Whether carefully planned and radical reform to the English criminal justice system would have produced a better result … very occasionally things went further, and drastic proposals for reform, whether in the form of public prosecutors or abolition of the death-for-felony rule, were briefly considered by the Crown and Parliament, before petering-out in the face of vested interests’.