interesting facts about crime and punishment
- Murder rates have been slightly higher in 16th Century England than the late-20th Century.
- Most murders in Elizabethan England took place within family settings.
- Henry VIII authorized a law in 1540 giving surgeons the bodies of four hanged criminals a year.
- There were about as many lawyers per capita in England in 1603 as they were in the early 1900s.
- Those convicted of heresy, treason, and murder received the harshest punishment: death.
- In the people’s view, every person and thing in the universe had a designated place and purpose.
- Heretics were burned to death at the state.
- Traitors were hanged, drawn, and quartered.
- Many english catholics resented Elizabeth’s rule; they wanted her catholic cousin, Mary Stuart, on the throne.
- Many lesser crimes were considered serious enough to warrant the death penalty.
- Those accuses of crimes had the right to a trial, though legal protections were minimal.
- A peasant that stole anything worth five or more pence would be hanged.
- The most disturbing execution in this time period was being quartered (capital offence. You would be hung until near death until you were taken down and the executioner would cut your body into four parts.
- It was illegal for guards of the queen to wear cloaks so they could reach for their swords in a quick fashion to protect the queen.
- The most painful instrument of torture for women was the "Brank". It is like a skeleton of a helmet clasped to the head and has a claw at the end to attach to the tongue, which caused pain if you spoke.
- It may seem the during the Elizabethan era that the poor were basically doomed, but in 1601 the poor relief act was passed assisting the poor to make them useful but at the same time improving their lives.