Crime and punishment in early modern England are an interesting topic of debate, whether the system actually worked? Whether gender and class had anything to do with the sentence for your crime? And of course, whether it was fair and just. The justice system in early modern England was quick and, in some ways, effective, however, whether or not you receive the outcome you hoped for really depended on the kind of person you were, in certain cases, it also depended on the evidence given at court. The court system within early modern England was not as corrupt as you would presume, however, there were certain loopholes that could help you out when facing trial, such as paying certain people to testify against the person you were accusing, or help you out of being convicted of crimes you were being accused of.
The most common punishment for women during the early modern period would be death by burning, or being burned at the stake. This was a recurring punishment for women who had been accused and found guilty of a crime called Petty Treason which, in our modern period, is now known as mariticide. Petty Treason was the act of a wife killing their husband, or the King of the house, (do you see where this is going?), of course treason was an act of crime against the crown, and seeing as the patriarch of the house was seen as the King of his household, the crime was known as petty treason, a crime of which our main focus of this blog was found guilty of[1].
Mrs Elizabeth Lylliman, only 50 years old, had found herself in the Old Bailey. This meant that a grand jury had seen her crime as a very serious accusation, and instead of sending her to her local magistrate for it to be dealt with, they had decided to send her case to the Old Bailey which is how I came across her individual case. Mrs Lylliman’s court trial has been described within the picture shown. In a quick summary, it is said that she begged and pleaded to see her husband’s body and that the jury, that was made up predominantly by men (as of course it was in the early modern period court system), saw this as an act or a “mad kind of Artiface” as they called it, meaning they saw it as artificial, this was commonplace within the courtroom when the jury believed the persons on trial were putting on an act and not being sincere in their actions. Although it was a slight gamble when trying to convince the jury you were being sincere, it was quite a popular tactic used to play on the emotions of the ones you stood before. They said she had done this to drag the attention away from her being the murderer and an attempt to fit into the role of a widow who desperately wants her husband back. She was found guilty however, as her husband had survived the initial attack and managed to tell a cobbler that his wife, Elizabeth Lylliman, had indeed stabbed him.
Within Garthine Walker’s Crime, Gender, and Social Order in Early Modern England[2], she includes a statistic that “between ten and twenty percent,” violent offences were acted out by women. This does not include the percentage of women who were accused of witchcraft, only those of violence. Walker brings to light the fact that it is easy to believe this percentage is so low due to the fact that women were docile toward their “violently disposed husband’s”, but this isn’t the entire truth, as Walker states that by following this idea, you are challenging the idea that women within this period could also be brutal and carry out criminal activities.
When looking into this court case, and seeing the transcript given it seems odd that it is never recorded as to exactly why Elizabeth Lylliman attacked her husband. If you take into account what Walker pointed out in saying that most wives were docile toward their abusive partners, it seems plausible that Elizabeth Lylliman may have no longer wanted to remain docile, and took matters into her own hands by dealing with her abusive partner. When taking Walker’s points into consideration, looking into this particular case, it is easy to see that Elizabeth Lylliman falls into the group of women who may have committed violent acts out of necessity, rather than out of wanting to purely commit a crime for the sake of it.
Bibliography
[1] – Old Bailey Proceedings (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, March 2018) 7th July 1675 Elizabeth Lylliman Trial, t-16750707, Accessed November 19th 2019
[2] – Walker, Garthine, “Voices of Feminine Violence”, Crime, Gender, and Social Order in Early Modern England, Cambridge University Press, 2003
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