Crime Notes

You will need to read both secondary and primary sources for most of the classes. This will usually involve a minimum requirement of one primary source reading (of 2-4 A4 pages: you won’t have to read early modern handwriting!) and one or two article- or chapter-length secondary sources, with suggestions for further reading if the topic interests you and/or if you want to follow it up in your research project.

You must do the minimum required reading in order to be able to participate in the discussion sections of classes and get the most out of the course.

The primary source documents will be distributed in hard copy and will also be available on Blackboard. Wherever possible I will provide direct links to electronic versions of articles via Joey (these will usually need Athens or other passwords for access off-campus). When it comes to titles that have to be obtained from the library, please always remember that there are other people who will want to read them. Either take notes or photocopy and return them as quickly as you can (and if you’re looking at them in the library, please put them back on the shelf where you found them). If you can’t find what you’re looking for in the Hugh Owen library, there’s a good chance that there’ll be a copy in NLW.

For a short overview of the topic for the Stuart period, see the chapter by Steve Hindle in A companion to Stuart Britain (ed. B Coward), which is also available online: ‘Crime and popular protest’. Similarly, there is a chapter on ‘Crime and punishment’ by JA Sharpe in A companion to eighteenth-century Britain (ed. HT Dickinson). There are multiple copies of both these books in the Hugh Owen library, and they’re useful reference works for many other subjects in the relevant periods.

The standard textbook on the topic of crime is JA Sharpe, Crime in early modern England (make sure that you get the second edition). It’s generally useful, and I recommend that you buy a copy (there are plenty in both Galloways and the Arts Centre bookshop). However, in some respects it’s a bit dated. These books might help to bring you up to speed in certain key areas on which Sharpe is less helpful:

Malcolm Gaskill, Crime and mentalities in early modern England, Introduction (available online)
J Kermode and G Walker, Women, crime and the courts in early modern England, Introduction
G Walker, Crime, gender and social order in early modern England, Introduction (available online)

The best discussion to date of crime in early modern Wales is the chapter on the subject in M Humphreys, The crisis of community: Montgomeryshire 1680-1815. There’s also a useful chapter by Nia Powell in JG Jones (ed), Class, community and culture in Tudor Wales.

Some of you may be looking for good overviews of the social history of the period. The following should be useful.

K Wrightson, English society 1580-1680 (although it only covers part of the period, this is still just about the best book of its kind available)
D Hay and N Rogers, Eighteenth-century English society: shuttles and swords
JA Sharpe, Early modern England: a social history
Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in early modern England 1550-1720
JG Jones, Early modern Wales 1525-1640
G Jenkins, The foundations of modern Wales 1642-1780
GE Jones, Modern Wales: a concise history

The classes will be in Hugh Owen D54, Friday mornings 10-12 (first class 3 February). These two-hour classes will be divided up into a mixture of lectures and more informal seminar-type discussion. We’ll have an internet connection and projector in order to make use of web resources as appropriate.

Edited to add, for anyone who might be a little confused about the organisation of the module, which is a bit different from most of your courses:

The Friday morning sessions each week (ten of them in total) are the only classes for this course and there are no additional seminar groups. Attendance is compulsory. There will be no more than 15 students (probably fewer) in the class. The emphasis, perhaps even more than usual, is very much on your own work out of class hours. You need to do reading of both secondary and primary sources before each class, and you will have to do some substantial work for the research project which is the main assignment. (More on that in a few weeks.)