The behaviour stayed. The law moved.

Between about 1500 and about 1750 three new kinds of crime appear in the records: vagrancy, moral crime and witchcraft. The obvious conclusion is that people started doing new things. ⚠️ THEY DID NOT. NOT ONE OF THE THREE WAS A NEW HUMAN BEHAVIOUR. People had always moved around the country looking for work. People had always had relationships outside marriage. Belief in magic was centuries old and entirely ordinary. ⚠️ WHAT CHANGED WAS THAT AUTHORITY STARTED PROSECUTING THEM. Which gives you the idea this whole period runs on, and it is worth more than any list you could memorise. ⚠️ A NEW CRIME IS USUALLY EVIDENCE ABOUT THE AUTHORITIES, NOT ABOUT THE CRIMINALS. When something that was tolerated for centuries suddenly becomes an offence, the interesting question is never "why did people start doing this". It is "why did those in power stop tolerating it". And this period gives a clear answer, because it was one of the most unsettled in British history. The Reformation changed the official religion more than once. Population rose faster than the work available. Prices climbed. Monasteries that had supported the poor were closed. Civil war came and went. People in authority were frightened, and frightened authorities criminalise. ⚠️ YOUR SPECIFICATION NAMES FIVE FACTORS - BELIEF, ATTITUDES AND VALUES; WEALTH AND POVERTY; URBANISATION; GOVERNMENT; AND TECHNOLOGY - AND THIS PERIOD IS ALMOST ENTIRELY THE FIRST TWO. The module built before this one showed justice being run by the community. What arrives now is a state confident enough to decide what counts as a crime at all.

Five words for this period

Five terms, defined by what they were and when they applied. What produced each one comes next.

Match each change to the factor behind it

More people than there was work for, rising prices, and the closing of the monasteries that had fed the poor
Those in power feared that people moving about the country in search of work would bring disorder with them
The official religion changed more than once within living memory, and each version had firm views about how people should behave
The Crown steadily took over cases that had previously been the Church's business
A belief that the threat of the severest possible penalty would stop people offending in the first place

WEALTH AND POVERTY, because the pressure came from people having no work and no relief
GOVERNMENT, because the response came from those in authority acting on a fear of disorder
BELIEF, ATTITUDES AND VALUES, because what counted as wrong was being redefined by religious change
GOVERNMENT AGAIN, this time in the shift of authority from Church to Crown
BELIEF, ATTITUDES AND VALUES ABOUT PUNISHMENT, because it rests on an assumption about what deters

What a new crime tells you

Something people had done for centuries becomes a criminal offence within a single generation. According to the argument this period rests on, what is the most useful question to ask?

Why those in authority stopped tolerating it, since the behaviour itself is not what changed
Why people suddenly started doing it much more often
Why people had become less moral than their grandparents
Nothing useful; laws change for no particular reason

Three new crimes, one upheaval

Read each column downwards: what people were doing, what changed in the law, and which of the specification's five factors drove it.

True about crime in this period

Select the TWO statements that are true.

The three new categories of crime reflect changes in the law rather than changes in what people were doing
Authority over moral offences shifted across this period, with the Crown taking over business that had been the Church's
People in this period genuinely became less law-abiding than their ancestors
The new offences appeared for no reason that can be explained

Why historians disagree about a period like this

One fact about this paper should shape how you revise it. ⚠️ THIS THEMATIC STUDY IS HEAVY ON INTERPRETATIONS AND CARRIES NO SOURCE-UTILITY QUESTIONS AT ALL. You will not be asked how useful a source is. You will be asked why two historians looking at the same period reached different conclusions. So the skill worth practising is explaining disagreement, and there are only a few reasons it happens. ⚠️ THEY EMPHASISE DIFFERENT FACTORS. One historian explains the new offences through wealth and poverty; another through belief and values. Both can be looking at the same evidence. Saying which factor an interpretation leans on is usually the fastest way into a question about it. ⚠️ THEY ASK DIFFERENT QUESTIONS OF THE SAME EVIDENCE. Court records tell you who was prosecuted. They do not tell you who offended, because most offending never reached a court. A historian interested in what people did and one interested in what authorities feared will read the same records to opposite effect. THEY WRITE AT DIFFERENT TIMES. What looks like the obvious explanation changes with the decade a historian is working in, and noticing that is a legitimate and creditable observation. And there is a trap peculiar to this period. ⚠️ A RISE IN PROSECUTIONS IS NOT THE SAME AS A RISE IN CRIME. More cases can mean more offending, or more enforcement, or a new law, or better record-keeping. An interpretation that treats rising prosecutions as proof of rising crime has assumed the very thing it needed to show, and saying so is exactly the kind of point that separates the top band. When you write about an interpretation, say what it emphasises, what it must therefore be treating as less important, and whether the evidence can carry the weight it is being asked to bear.

Being poor in the wrong parish

Vagrancy is the clearest case, because the behaviour involved is so plainly ordinary. A man walks from one town to the next looking for work. He has done nothing to anyone. ⚠️ BY THE MIDDLE OF THIS PERIOD HE IS COMMITTING AN OFFENCE, AND ONE PUNISHED WITH REAL SEVERITY. So what had changed? Not him. Four things around him. The population was rising faster than the work available, so more people had to travel further to find any. Prices rose faster than wages, which meant that people who had been just managing no longer were. ⚠️ THE MONASTERIES CLOSED, and with them went the largest source of relief the poor had. The Reformation did not intend to create a crisis of poverty; it did so anyway. And responsibility for the poor fell on the parish, which meant each parish had a sharp interest in whose poor they were. A stranger without work was, very concretely, somebody else's expense. ⚠️ PUT THOSE TOGETHER AND THE LAW MAKES A KIND OF SENSE THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MAN HIMSELF. Those in authority saw growing numbers of people on the roads at a time of religious and political instability, and read them as a threat rather than as a symptom. Notice what contemporaries did NOT do. They did not conclude that the economy had failed the poor. ⚠️ THEY DISTINGUISHED BETWEEN THOSE THEY JUDGED UNABLE TO WORK, WHO MIGHT BE HELPED, AND THOSE THEY JUDGED UNWILLING, WHO WOULD BE PUNISHED - and the judgement of which was which was made by the same authorities who feared them. That distinction is the period in miniature. ⚠️ THE LAW DID NOT DISCOVER A NEW KIND OF CRIMINAL. IT DECIDED THAT AN OLD KIND OF MISFORTUNE WOULD BE TREATED AS A CRIME, and which factor you emphasise in explaining that is what any two historians will disagree about.

Order the chain from upheaval to offence

Put the links in order, from the pressures of the period to a man being arrested for walking between towns.

Population grows faster than the available work, and prices rise faster than wages
The monasteries close, removing the largest source of relief for the poor
More people travel further in search of work, and are visible on the roads
Those in authority, already uneasy at a time of instability, read that movement as a threat of disorder
Laws are passed making it an offence to be poor and away from your own parish without work

The early modern run

Five questions on new crimes, enforcement and punishment. Three lives.

Spot the true early modern crime facts

Tap the TWO statements that are true.

Vagrancy, moral crime and witchcraft became offences without the underlying behaviour being new
A rise in prosecutions can reflect more enforcement or a new law rather than more offending
The new offences show that people in this period had become less law-abiding
This thematic study is assessed mainly through questions on how useful a source is

Complete the early modern crime facts

Being poor and away from your home parish without work became an offence known as _____. Behaviour treated as criminal because it broke religious rules rather than because it harmed anyone is called _____. Courts run by the Church rather than the Crown, whose reach shrank across this period, were the _____. The growing body of law making a large number of offences punishable by death later became known as _____.

vagrancy moral crime church courts the Bloody Code witchcraft tithing parish constable poor relief

Assemble the factor sentence

Build the three-part sentence this paper rewards: what changed, which factor drove it, and why that factor produced that change.

Three interpretations to weigh

Three cases. Each answer has to carry the reasoning, not just the verdict.

Two historians explain the rise of prosecutions for moral offences. One emphasises religious change; the other emphasises the authorities' need to look in control during instability. How should an answer treat the disagreement?
A student writes that court records prove crime rose sharply in this period. What is the problem?
Asked why witchcraft prosecutions rose, a student answers that people at the time were superstitious and did not know any better. What would improve it?

Explain why the crimes changed

A classmate has memorised that vagrancy, moral crime and witchcraft were the new crimes of this period, and cannot explain why any of them appeared. Write them an explanation.

Explain why a new category of crime usually tells you more about the authorities than about the people prosecuted
Explain the emergence of vagrancy as an offence, naming the factors involved and showing how they connect
Explain how religious upheaval lies behind both moral crime and the prosecution of witchcraft
Explain what changed about who enforced the law, particularly between the Church courts and the Crown
Finish by explaining why a rise in prosecutions is not by itself evidence that more offending was taking place

Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Britain

Use it, the way the marks are given

What you'll cover