In this lecture Professor Wrightson examines the problem of order in early modern society, focusing on crimes of violence and upon property crime. In examining violence, he notes the existence of special cases geographically (the borderlands) and socially (aristocratic violence) before looking at the lower (and gradually declining) levels of homicide in general. He then considers property crime, distinguishing the various categories of theft and the manner in which cases were brought to, and handled in, the courts. The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries witnessed a peak in prosecution, but while the law could be harsh and bloody in meting out punishment, it was also characterized by discretionary extension of mercy. Interpretations of the use of such discretion are compared and assessed -- as are the limits that existed on its use in a society that believed in the deterrent effect of "exemplary punishment."

Reading assignment:
Wrightson, English Society, pp. 149-73

1. General Introduction
2. "The Tree of Commonwealth": The Social Order in the Sixteenth Century
3. Households: Structures, Priorities, Strategies, Roles
4. Communities: Key Institutions and Relationships
5. "Countries" and Nation: Social and Economic Networks and the Urban System
6. The Structures of Power
7. Late Medieval Religion and Its Critics
8. Reformation and Division, 1530-1558
9. "Commodity" and "Commonwealth": Economic and Social Problems, 1520-1560
10. The Elizabethan Confessional State: Conformity, Papists and Puritans
11. The Elizabethan "Monarchical Republic": Political Participation
12. Economic Expansion, 1560-1640
13. A Polarizing Society, 1560-1640
14. Witchcraft and Magic
15. Crime and the Law
16. Popular Protest
17. Education and Literacy
18. Street Wars of Religion: Puritans and Arminians
19. Crown and Political Nation, 1604-1640
20. Constitutional Revolution and Civil War, 1640-1646
21. Regicide and Republic, 1647-1660
22. An Unsettled Settlement: The Restoration Era, 1660-1688
23. England, Britain, and the World: Economic Development, 1660-1720
24. Refashioning the State, 1688-1714
25. Concluding Discussion and Advice on Examination

This course is intended to provide an up-to-date introduction to the development of English society between the late fifteenth and the early eighteenth centuries. Particular issues addressed in the lectures will include: the changing social structure; households; local communities; gender roles; economic development; urbanization; religious change from the Reformation to the Act of Toleration; the Tudor and Stuart monarchies; rebellion, popular protest and civil war; witchcraft; education, literacy and print culture; crime and the law; poverty and social welfare; the changing structures and dynamics of political participation and the emergence of parliamentary government.

Course Structure:
This Yale College course, taught on campus twice per week for 50 minutes, was recorded for Open Yale Courses in Fall 2009.