Reformation of Manners in Early Modern England

Abstract

On 10 March 1612 the Westminster Court of Burgesses assembled in the ‘town court house’ for its regular weekly session. The judges were the Dean of Westminster, the Deputy Chief Steward, the twelve Burgesses (representing the twelve Westminster wards) and their twelve Assistants. The jury, convened as necessary, comprised twelve ‘honest householders’ of the city. Their duty was to hear cases concerning nuisances, illegal inmates, scolding, slander and sexual immorality in all its forms, and as it happened the leading case that day was one of bastard-bearing. Susan Perry, who had borne an illegitimate child, had little option but to confess. Robert Watson, waterman, her alleged partner, denied the charge, but it availed him nothing. After trial by jury he was pronounced guilty, and thereupon it was ordered by ye court that the s[ai]d Rob [er]t Watson and Susan Perry should be committed to the prison of the Gatehouse and both of them to be stripp’d naked from the wast upwards and so tyed to the carts tayle and to be whipp’d from the Gatehouse in Westm [inste]r unto Temple Barr and then and there to be pr[e] sently banished from the Citty and Libertyes and if either of them returne again and be taken within the Citty & Libertyes to be likewise whipped.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 99 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.