The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England (54 page)

The sense of natural justice underlying such lenient treatment affects other cases too. A pregnant servant in the house of a yeoman secretly delivers her baby herself and then hides it among her employer’s pigs. When the yeoman finds the dead baby he reports his servant to the constable. At the subsequent trial the jury decides the child was already dead before it ended up in the pigsty. Another case concerns a woman who drowns a baby in a horse-pond and submerges the corpse, weighed down with stones. She too is given the benefit of the doubt, and the jury decides it was stillborn.
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Similarly a jury might be lenient on a man caught stealing a goose to feed his family, and might deliberately undervalue the animal so that he is merely fined for petty larceny rather than hanged for theft.

Ecclesiastical Law

Perhaps the biggest difference between the law in Elizabethan times and in the modern world is its religious dimension. Some of the moral
rules that apply to everyone in society have already been mentioned, such as the carting of bawds and incestuous couples through the streets of London. However, these few references do not even hint at the huge number of cases that are tried by the ecclesiastical courts. Essex has an adult population of about 35,000 rising to 40,000 at the end of the reign. At least 15,000 of these people – over
one-third
– are arraigned for sexual offences. Nor is this a peculiar feature of Essex. In the diocese of York, the proportion indicted for sexual offences is even higher. It appears that people have a lot of sex and a great proportion of that sex is unlawful. Much of it is detected and reported by jealous husbands and wives, or revealed through the pregnancies of maidservants, girls, unmarried women and widows. Even just being
suspected
of a sexual offence can result in you being summoned to appear and prove your innocence. While you might not treat ecclesiastical law as seriously as the common law – and many Elizabethan people don’t treat it with much respect – its very ubiquity is a reminder that England is a deeply religious society.

If you are found to be living immorally or are in breach of any ecclesiastical law, the churchwardens of your parish will report you to the local archdeaconry court. You will then be summoned to appear by an apparitor on a certain date. If you are innocent, you need to arrange for a number of ‘compurgators’ – upstanding, honest and sober parishioners – to come to court with you and testify to that effect. The exact number of compurgators will be determined by the court; five or six is normal, but for some offences the court might ask for eight or nine. Men are required to produce male compurgators, women have to find other women (compurgatrices). If the archdeaconry court is twenty or thirty miles away you might well have to pay substantial expenses, including an overnight stay for all those accompanying you. If you are poor, therefore, you may find it impossible to produce compurgators in court. Moreover, if just one compurgator does not turn up, or fails to swear an oath on the Bible before testifying, then you will be found guilty and ordered to do penance.

The most usual form of penance ordered by the archdeaconry courts is to stand at the door of your parish church on Sunday in a white sheet, carrying a white wand, and to confess your fault to your fellow parishioners. You will also have to stand in front of the congregation during the service while the incumbent reads a suitable homily.
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You might have to do penance on two or three Sundays in succession. You may also have to stand or kneel bareheaded and barefooted in the marketplace wearing a paper hat with the words ‘fornicator’, ‘blasphemer’ or ‘adulterer’ written on it. Married women might have to do penance with their hair loose, emphasising their wantonness. People who commit a sin involving two parishes or congregations have to do penance in both places. Such public humiliation is seen both as deterrent and punishment. Having said that, it is not an equitable system. If a couple are accused of adultery and the woman finds sufficient compurgatrices while the man fails to do so, he still has to go through the whole purgation ritual. Strangely his partner in crime may well be sitting in the congregation, having been found innocent, while the man confesses his adultery with her.

If you can’t afford to travel to court with compurgators, then you might well decide to let your reputation go to pieces and accept excommunication: 4,000 people in Essex alone do exactly that during Elizabeth’s reign.
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There are two forms of excommunication. In its minor form it is simply suspension from church services and exclusion from the sacraments of marriage and communion. Major excommunication, however, is far more serious: it means that you will not be welcome in a Christian house, nor may your fellow Christians help you in any way; you cannot be represented or represent yourself in any court, ecclesiastical or secular, nor can you be buried in consecrated ground. If you are a truly morally offensive person, the archdeaconry court can apply to the bishop to seek royal assistance in having you imprisoned.
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This, however, is very rare. Most people succumb after they have been punished with minor excommunication. Those who do not are regarded as beyond the pale by their fellow parishioners and have effectively excluded themselves from their community.

MORAL OFFENCES

What sort of offences will result in you being led to the archdeacon in shame? Failure to observe the rites of the church is a common reason. In fact, it is the second-most-common offence of all secular and ecclesiastical crimes and offences (second only to unlawful sex).
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Attendance at church is compulsory for everyone over the age of
fourteen: you must go every Sunday and on nineteen saints’ feast days, as well as the feast of the Circumcision (1 January), Epiphany (6 January), the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (25 March), Christmas Day, the Monday and Tuesday in Easter Week, and the Monday and Tuesday in Whitsun week.
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Failure to do so will lead to a fine – one shilling if you miss church just once, more if you are absent regularly. Children should be sent to church at least twice a month to be catechised. Failing to present a child for baptism is also an offence, as is opening a shop on a Sunday.

In Stratford-upon-Avon no fewer than thirty-seven tradesmen are accused of opening their shops on holy days in October 1592. When a Stratford woman is accused in court of brawling, being abusive and failing to attend church she replies, ‘God’s wounds! A plague of God on you all, a fart of one’s arse for you!’
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Such a carefully thought-out theological position might well get her into further trouble: blasphemy is also likely to result in her being reported by the churchwardens. Even falling asleep during a sermon is a punishable offence. Considering sermons can last up to three hours, you can see why some people get a little bored. In 1593 Dorothy Richmond of Great Holland, Essex, is taken before the archdeaconry court for causing ‘disquietness’ during a sermon. She ‘thrust a pin in Eddy Alefounder’s buttocks’.
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Defamation is the ecclesiastical equivalent of the secular crime of slander. Most derogatory speech is slanderous – or libellous if written down – but if it impugns the moral character of the victim, it is defamatory and is dealt with by the archdeaconry court. If someone calls you ‘a whore and an arrant whore’, you can report them to the churchwarden and your accuser will have to answer for it in the archdeaconry courts. As a result, an archdeaconry court is rarely a boring place, enlivened by the language, stories and invective. In 1586 John Worme prosecutes Helen Rand for defamation. A witness testifies that she was with Helen Rand and their husbands in the meadow at hay-making time when Helen declared that

John Worme would have been naughty with her and would have laid her down upon a bed in her own house and before she could get rid of him she was fain to promise him the use of her body the next night. Worme did say unto Helen, when he would have had his pleasure upon her, that he could make as good a cunt of a lath and two coney skins as his wife had.
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The trouble with such cases is that it can be difficult to prove your innocence, as Helen Rand finds. Worse, the failure to prove your case might result in you being accused of defamation yourself. In July 1583 a Hertfordshire woman called Helen Burton suspects her husband is having an affair with Isabel Todd. One day she follows her husband to Isabel’s house. She creeps in and bursts through the door of the bedchamber to see her husband holding Isabel up against the side of the bed without his shirt on. There is uproar and Helen is shoved out of the room. After the event, people round on Helen, telling her, ‘it is an evil bird that defileth its own nest’. To add insult to injury, Isabel the adulteress then successfully prosecutes Helen for defamation.
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Drunkenness might also bring you face to face with the archdeacon. Of course, if you are violent or destructive in your drunkenness you will end up in the secular courts – but just
being
drunk can lead to you being summoned to the ecclesiastical court. You can be charged for lying down in a field and sleeping it off, for being so drunk that you cannot stand up, and even for wetting your bed in your drunken state – although this mostly happens when it is someone else’s bed. The offender normally has to do penance in church, with a series of pint tankards arrayed before him as he kneels and confesses his transgression. In 1584 the sexton of a Colchester parish is reported as being ‘a railer, a blasphemer, a swearer and a slanderer, and suspected of drunkenness’.
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Whoever reported him to the churchwardens is leaving nothing to chance.

And then we come to sex, by far the most common form of moral offence. Like defamation, unlawful sex can be difficult to prove because most of the time there is no evidence available to the court that an offence has taken place – unless the woman becomes pregnant, or one of the parties confesses or contracts venereal disease. But even pregnancy does not indicate who is responsible. Hearsay, guilt and moral outrage are therefore often the sum total of the ‘evidence’. Of course, the loyalty of one’s husband or wife is of such crucial importance that people are attentive to any signs of dishonour, and even to false rumours; but equally you will find men and women covering up their partners’ sexual transgressions. Men especially do not want the neighbourhood to know they have been cuckolded. Reputation is so important that many people will vigorously defend every accusation laid against them, whether true or not.

Unsurprisingly, adultery is the most common crime for which men
and women are summoned to appear before the archdeaconry courts. Or, to be accurate,
suspicion
of adultery is. In 1591 a woman is seen to allow three men to enter her house at dusk. The authorities come to investigate and find all three men in separate beds and the woman sitting by the fire, wearing nothing but her smock. She is found guilty of acting lewdly and forced to do penance. In 1579 a widow persuades Henry Packer to spend the night in her house. He goes to sleep in a separate room, but during the night he hears her sighing and goes to her. She asks him to warm her cold feet and he obliges. When the widow falls pregnant, the neighbours are convinced they know who is responsible. Both Henry Packer and the widow accordingly find themselves in court. The widow produces sufficient compurgatrices. Henry Packer, however, fails to gather enough support; instead he confesses and is ordered to do penance alone. You cannot help but see the irony – especially considering the common assumption that this is a man’s world.

After a while of listening to the proceedings in church courts, you will come to think that the Church is more concerned about the crimes it deals with than about the victims. In regard to sexual misdemeanours, this is true. For example, both men and women can be presented to a church court for simply sheltering unmarried mothers. In the modern world, this would be seen as a charitable act. Not in Elizabethan England. In 1564 a man who gives shelter to a pregnant girl ‘for God’s sake’ is sentenced to do public penance in the market place and to give 2s to the poor, even though there is no suggestion that he is in any way to blame for her pregnancy. In 1566, Agnes Rooke, a widow of West Ham, is brought before the archdeacon’s court accused of harbouring someone else’s pregnant servant. She is only let off when the archdeacon is informed that the girl tried to drown herself and the kind widow saved her and took her in.
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It gets worse. If a female servant is raped and falls pregnant, and cannot persuade the secular courts to take action, she will be made to suffer for her ‘crime’ by the church courts. Just before Christmas 1590 Joan Somers is in a field tending to her mistress’s cattle when one Rice Evans comes up to her. He seizes her and violently rapes her, telling her that she can cry out as much as she wants, for there is no one to hear her. Joan is subsequently presented to the archdeacon for the sin of fornication.
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A similar case is that of Jane Wright in 1579. She is a servant in the household of John Lawrence of Colne
Engaine and his wife Joan. One night her master asks her to rub his back as he lies in bed. She refuses, but her mistress Joan urges her to obey her husband. She is made to lie on the bed in her clothes rubbing his back until she feels tired and cold, at which point both John and Joan demand that she continue rubbing him under the covers. Jane later admits that she is then

enticed by him and his wife that night as at other times also to come in bed naked with the two of them, at which times he has carnal knowledge of her, her said dame lying in bed with him and warranting her that she should have no harm and that the other maids used to do the like before.