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

Gaskill, Malcolm

doi:10.1017/s0268416000003453

Cited by 22 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 37 publications

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“…117 Offering rewards, pardons, and part of the fines to informers for information on offenders had been an established practice in England since at least the seventeenth century. 118 Although this practice encouraged more people to use the legal system, it also acted as an inducement to malicious prosecutions. 119 In Van Diemen's Land informers could gain half of the penalties for noncompliance, and for the police these laws were "like so many gifts from Jupiter to Pandora."…”

Section: Corrupt Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policing in a Penal Colony: Governor Arthur's Police System in Van Diemen's Land, 1826–1836

Petrow¹

2000

Law hist. rev.

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In eighteenth-century England the rule of law was "the central legitimizing ideology, displacing the religious authority and sanctions of previous centuries." 1 Arising out of struggles between the monarchy, Parliament, and the courts, the rule of law sought to protect individual liberty and private property by placing constraints on arbitrary authority. The ruling class used the rule of law ideology to enhance their power, but it also acted as a check on that power. All citizens from the monarch to the poorest citizen became bound by the rule of law and could settle their disputes in the courts presided over by judges, who were independent of manipulation. 2

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Section: Corrupt Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policing in a Penal Colony: Governor Arthur's Police System in Van Diemen's Land, 1826–1836

Petrow¹

2000

Law hist. rev.

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Fashioning Adultery

Turner

2002

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This 2002 book provides a major survey of representations of adultery in later seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England. Bringing together a wide variety of literary and legal sources - including sermons, pamphlets, plays, diaries, periodicals, trial reports and the records of marital litigation - it documents a growing diversity in perceptions of marital infidelity in this period, against the backdrop of an explosion in print culture and a decline in the judicial regulation of sexual immorality. In general terms the book charts and explains a gradual transformation of ideas about extra-marital sex, whereby the powerfully established religious argument that adultery was universally a sin became increasingly open to challenge. The book charts significant developments in the idiom in which sexually transgressive behaviour was discussed, showing how evolving ideas of civility and social refinement and new thinking about gender difference influenced assessments of immoral behaviour.

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Turner¹

2002

Fashioning Adultery

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

Cited by 22 publications

References 37 publications

Policing in a Penal Colony: Governor Arthur's Police System in Van Diemen's Land, 1826–1836

Policing in a Penal Colony: Governor Arthur's Police System in Van Diemen's Land, 1826–1836

Fashioning Adultery

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