2nd Edition
Stories of True Crime in Tudor and Stuart England
Now in its second edition, Stories of True Crime in Tudor and Stuart England has been updated to include more texts about witchcraft, murder, and sexual deviance and discussions about the historical climate within which crimes occurred; voice and print culture; and types of crime and criminals.
This volume contains modernized and annotated chapbooks related to crimes such as murder, theft, infanticide, rape, and witchcraft with accompanying illustrations that depict the acts and punishments of criminals in Tudor and Stuart England. In this edition, special attention has been paid to demonstrating significant overlaps and encouraging students to question authors’ reasonings behind including multiple crimes in a single work. Alongside this, further useful prompts have been included to stimulate discussion about why parables were used to open chapbooks, the historical context underpinning certain criminal acts, the value of these sources to scholars, and how certain texts compare and contrast with others.
With five new chapters and an updated introduction and bibliography, the second edition of Stories of True Crime in Tudor and Stuart England is an essential resource for all students of crime and punishment in early modern England.
1. The blood-thirsty papist 2. The jealous mercer and the smitten lover 3. The strange discovery of sundry murders 4.The boy without any fear 5. The minister’s mutilation and murder 6. The cock-a-doodle-doo miracle 7. The life and death of a bawd 8. The hog-keeper and her daughter 9. The cripple’s complaint and the strumpet’s repentence 10. The gentlewoman’s unnatural crimes 11. The unhappy litigant 12. The Flowers at Beaver castle 13. The life and death of a churlish knave 14. The Devil’s secretary 15. The witches of St Edmundsbury 16. The baronet at the bar 17. The child-killer of St Olave 18. The cavalier killer gets pressed 19. The gardener’s gallows reprieve 20. The murderous siblings of Monmouth 21. The widow’s murder 22. The beastly highwaymen 23. The fire in the garrett 24. The penitent apprentice 25. The common witch, Goody Buts 26. The kindly widow and the shopkeeper’s wife 27. The madness of Mary Philmore 28. The French midwife’s miserable moan 29. The wicked life of Captain Harrison 30. The earl’s fatal stroke
Biography
Ken MacMillan is Professor of History at the University of Calgary, Canada, where he researches and teaches about law and society in early modern England. He is the author of Death and Disorder: A History of Early Modern England, 1485–1690 (2020).
