Law and Order in Historical Perspective: The Case of Elizabethan Essex (Studies in Social Discontinuity)

As historians shifted their interest from the romance, spectacle, and political intrigue during the reign of Elizabeth I to the actual lives of the people she ruled, they produced an impressive body of studies. Amid this impressive growth of historical scholarship, one significant discipline has been all but ignored - the law. Believing crime to be an outgrowth as well as a reflection of the social upheavals that took place during the Elizabethan Era, Professor Samaha have prepared an in-depth study of the Elizabethan system of criminal justice as it operated in Essex County during the last half of the sixteenth century. He shows in detail how the administration of justice worked on a day-to-day basis - i.e., what crimes were committed, who was prosecuted for them, who was convicted and who went free, what punishment was given for different offenses, and what standards were set up for determining legality and illegality. A licensed attorney as well as an historian, Professor Samaha is eminently qualified to describe the interaction of law and history. In this book, he skillfully examines the interrelationship between rising crime rates during the last half of the sixteenth century with the Western European population explosion and the birth of the industrial revolution. He reveals not only a real increase in crime, but also a shift in the community's attitude toward law and order - a change reflected in tougher application of the rules of criminal law, increasing numbers of appointed law-enforcement officials, and the emergence of a bureaucratic structure. This book represents a study of law in historical perspective that will be of great interest to scholars and professors of history and sociology, as well as specialists in English and Elizabethan history. --- from book's dustjacket