Mary Tudor

Keeping the Peace
650 years serving the Community
Crime and Punishment
In Saxon times, guilt was decided
through trial by ordeal
People could be trussed up and thrown into the duckpond. Some sources
say, if the accused drowned, it proved he or she was innocent.
Mary Tudor
Although these
practices began
to die out in the
13th century, the
establishment of
modern justice was
a gradual process....
In Tudor and Stuart
times, magistrates
had to enforce the
laws dealing with
constant religious
changes.
While Mary Tudor reigned (1553 – 1558),
magistrates played their (often reluctant) part in
the burning of 273 Protestants.
By the middle of the 1600s JPs could sentence
prisoners:
 to hang
 to be transported to Australia, America
and the Caribbean
 to be whipped or put in the stocks
 to be fined
Imprisonment was mainly used for debtors,
who had to pay for their own upkeep.
William Allwood
is sentenced to
four years hard
labour for theft
For his second offence
of theft, William
Allwood is sentenced
to transportation for 10
years
In 1715 the Riot Act was introduced, to
deal with the threat of Jacobite rebellion.
Justices could order a crowd of 12 people
or more to disperse by “Reading the Riot
Act”.
1819 The Peterloo Massacre.
Magistrates used cavalry to disperse a
crowd of 60,000 people in Manchester.
20 people died and 400 were injured.
Local records tell of various crimes that
were dealt with by magistrates:
Peterloo Massacre, Richard Carlile
Information about an
assault in 1809
Details about a
theft in 1876
www.magistrates-association.org.uk
www.leics.gov.uk/magistrates