Early Modern Resources

In the 17th century, there existed, just outside the City of London, an area famed and feared for its lawlessness, the ‘sanctuary’ or ‘liberty’ of Whitefriars, colloquially known as Alsatia. The project here is to gather the documents and materials, analyse them and seek to understand the part it played in the making of London.

Large collection of scanned documents relating to English law and government from The National Archives in London.

NB: link to download MS Word document
article by Lynne Robson (Warwick Centre for the Study of the Renaissance)
From Renaissance Journal, 2:1 (2004)

Resources relating to the trials of British soldiers who fired on a Boston crowd in 1770 (Douglas Linder)

transcription (in XML format) of N. Bailey’s Universal Etymological English Dictionary (Liam Quin)

Website of a student project making imaginative use of original sources (Margaret Allen, Mandy Taylor, Bonnie Bonifield)

An essay looking at clothing, the second-hand clothes trade and theft in the early eighteenth century (Melissa Johnson)

Basic information and reading for a taught course syllabus (Susan Dinan)

An essay about the judicial and penal system of early modern Germany (Robert Selig)

This useful resource includes sections on the Elizabethan underworld, attitudes to crime, punishment (Internet Shakespeare Editions)

Book extract: chapter from Garthine Walker’s monograph (Cambridge, 2003)

An abstract of criminal cases from Dartford tried at the Assize courts: gives a flavour of the types of offence tried at these important English courts (Dartford Archive)

seminar paper by Howard G Brown
Institute of Historical Research e-seminars (1996-98, exact date unknown)

a broad-ranging themed bibliography of published secondary sources, searchable (EMR)

Vast scholarly bibliography, now searchable and browsable by subject and region (Jonathan Durrant)

essay by Steve Hindle on the importance of commons rights for the rural poor and on their resistance to enclosures which threatened these (BBC Online)

website about convicts transported to Australia in 1787; includes a database of the First Fleet convicts; information about the sources used; extracts from primary sources; research guidance; links (University of Wollongong)

seminar paper by Thomas Munck, examining early developments in institutionalised poor relief, through a case study of Danish workhouses and forced labour schemes (Institute of Historical Research e-seminars)

A bibliography of printed materials relating to defamation and slander, honour and insult (EMR)

E-text of 1852 book (Making of America)

Resources relating to the 1735 trial of a Boston printer that is regarded as a landmark in the development of a free press (Douglas Linder)

Online edition of Ruth Paley’s edition of these key sources for crime and justice in eighteenth-century London (University of London/History of Parliament Trust)

An essay examining the eighteenth-century English criminal justice system (David Friedman)

A fully searchable edition of 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets for eighteenth-century London. Includes criminal justice, parish poor relief, hospital and guild records.

article by Jessica A Browner, examining Southwark’s notorious reputation during the early modern period, a shady world of petty crime, alehouses and prostitution (U. Virginia)
From Essays in History, 36 (1994)

A ‘fully searchable online edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court’ (1674-1913). The fully searchable database is accompanied by extensive historical background sections and facilities and guides for users.

Presents a wide range of texts (including ballads, newspaper reports, fictional stories, memoirs), as well as an outline history, bibliography and links (Gillian Spraggs)

digital resource relating to the history of copyright in five jurisdictions (France, Germany, Italy, the UK and US) for the period up to 1900 (L. Bently & M. Kretschmer)

This resource covers the middle ages through to the eighteenth century, with primary source materials, arranged chronologically and by themes such as ‘cony-catchers’ and ‘murderers’, plus a glossary, links and bibliography (Culturecrime)

An excellent resource for the history of the 1692 witchcraft trials (University of Virginia)