II. Informing for Profit: A Sidelight on Tudor Methods of Law-enforcement

Abstract

That the making of a law and the enforcement of it are two different things is a commonplace which is nowhere more clearly exemplified than in the history of economic legislation. As a recent essay on ‘The Smugglers' Trade’ has shown, the point applied with special force to the sixteenth century when the government attempted on an unprecedented scale to control the economic life of the country, and especially the export and import of goods. The problem was twofold. In the first place the administration of the customs limped badly behind the rest of the financial administration. It was not until 1536 that nationally uniform rates were imposed, and at no time could the central government be sure of exercising effective control over the local customers and searchers and their deputies. While the royal lands were put under a modernized administration in the hands of such courts as those of General Surveyors and Augmentations, nothing was done either by Henry VII or by Thomas Cromwell to go to the root of the customs question. Cromwell, indeed, produced a comprehensive code with a preamble which showed that at least he knew what the trouble was; but somewhat in contrast to his usual practice, he did not approach the administrative problem at all. The customs were left in the exchequer from whose palsied hands the royal lands had been removed; consequently, when in an age of rising prices the value of the customs revenue began to outpace that of fixed land rents, the government of Elizabeth could do no better than farm a revenue which their own machinery was incapable of handling efficiently. Until the reign of Charles II, the English customs administration was never thoroughly reformed, and governments fell back either on the inefficient exchequer or on the dubious expedient of farming.

Wool Smuggling and the Royal Government in England, c.1337–63: Law Enforcement and the Moral Economy in the Late Middle Ages

“…And even then, of course, juror attitudes could negate attempts to prosecute smuggling if it was perceived to be a morally legitimate act rather than a crime truly worthy of punishment, and work on the smugglers' trade from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth suggests that this was often the case. 259…”

Gods, Informers, and the Erotics of Surveillance: The Critique of Surveillance in King Lear

“…Scholars have long noted that the profit motive corrupted early modern English surveillance and, by extension, the legal, political, and religious systems relying on it (Elton 1954;Davies 1956;Williams 1979;Higgs 2004). Their conclusions echo those of Shakespeare's contemporaries.…”

“…On the other hand, the most visible feature of the early modern English surveillance society was the qui-tam surveillance assemblage wherein informers were paid for information on a variety of crimes, their payment coming not from the state but from the accused. Ostensibly designed to police economic infractions, in practice qui-tam surveilling disproportionately hurt the poor, terrorized the innocent, and targeted English Catholics, who were fined for not attending Anglican services (the sect of Protestantism practiced in England at the time) or, if they did attend and were crypto-Catholics, were blackmailed by unscrupulous neighbors into a settlement not shared with the state (Beresford 1957;Elton 1954). As economic policy, it was disruptive, but as a legal and political tool, it was disastrous for the state's credibility.…”

The displacement of Providence: policing and prosecution in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England

“…Although less effective against murder (because it was not an 'organized' crime), government rewards were frequently offered ad hoc for crimes of blood. 43 Private parties also put up rewards -sometimes huge sums-and Whitehall regularly granted pardons for accessories in such cases. Thus in 1721 when Sir James Harbet was found strangled in Buckinghamshire, his widow offered both a pardon and £1,000 for information, at a time when a man could live a comfortable, middle-class London life on an annual income of£50.…”