"Of persons capable of committing crimes": Law and responsibility in England, 1660-1800.

Abstract

This dissertation examines changing definitions of moral and legal responsibility for crime in England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An analysis of felony cases in which defendants and witnesses excused crime with the pleas of insanity, drunkenness, and poverty coupled with a close reading of legal commentaries and treatises compares elite and popular perceptions of individual accountability. Between 1660 and 1800 legal discourse in England, previously shaped by religious discussions of morality, sin, and temptation, slowly integrated a secularized definition of criminal responsibility. Although mitigation was not new to the judicial system, in the eighteenth century attention to the circumstances that surrounded the crime or the criminal personality was marked by its emphasis on the psychological and social pressures that might interfere with the defendant's judgment and self-restraint. Previous studies have illustrated how authorities exercised discretion when they enforced England's 'bloody code'; this work places defendants in the mitigation process to show how they shaped their own fates within the legal system. The shifting definition of responsibility concerned legal reformers who sought to apply absolute definitions of guilt and innocence in a system of standardized 'certain punishment.'. This dissertation explicates the anthropology of decision-making as it was practiced by victims, justices of the peace, judges, and jurors. Three discourses about criminal intent and accountability interacted in court: an elite discourse of prescriptive literature, written law, and legal commentary; a practical discourse expressed in manuals for justices of the peace; and a justice discourse based on village values. Through a detailed analysis of pre-trial depositions from the North East Circuit Assizes, courtroom testimony from London's Old Bailey, and post-trial procedure documented in pardon letters and petitions, this dissertation traces the negotiation of mitigation in legal practice. Newspaper accounts and pamphlet literature provide an additional perspective on crime, law, and society. The sources reveal shifting understandings of accountability and mental capacity which revolutionized definitions of responsibility and raised questions about personal and institutional ethical standards.