Introduction

This is the first of two seminars which will consider the various ways in which conflicts were resolved. This week we will discuss verdicts, sentences, pardons, and appeals, comparing their forms and uses across early modern Europe.

Seminar Question

To what extent did the forms and uses of verdicts, sentences, pardons, and appeals vary across early modern Europe?

Required Reading

Each student should select and read three chapters from the items below:

Dalton, Michael, The Countrey Justice (London, 1618) [This manual was used by English justices of the peace. It offers advice on a wide range of issues including levying customs, highways, prisons, riots, soldiers, murder, felonies, rogues, vagabonds, and high treason. It has an index.]

Heijden, Manon van der, Women and Crime in Early Modern Holland, trans. David McKay (Leiden, 2016), Chapter Two.

Kollmann, Nancy Shields, Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia (Cambridge, 2015), Chapter Seven.

Langbein, John H., Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance : England, Germany, France (Cambridge, MA, 1974) [NB This includes the texts of key English, French, and Imperial statutes, and commentaries on these]

Further Reading

Gray, Drew D., Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1660-1914 (London, 2016), Chapter Twelve.