Paper
in Early Modern England1
In early modern England, rape – a capital crime – constituted about 1 per cent of indicted felonies. Guilty verdicts were rare, although a majority of convicted rapists were hanged. Attempted rape – a misdemeanour – likewise formed only a tiny minority of prosecutions for assault although the conviction rate may have been higher. Early modern historians have paid little attention to rape and other forms of sexual violence. Those few who have considered it have focused predominantly upon the incidence of prosecutions relative to other crimes and, working on the sensible assumption that the majority of rapes and sexual assaults were never reported, have been concerned with why this might have been so.2 Yet the social history of rape in early modern England could be described as a non-history, a history of absence. Rape is defined and interpreted in terms of the silence of historical actors, the impediments to successful prosecution, a perceived lack of historical evidence, and the limitations of early modern criminal court records as sources. It appears in its nascent historiography as a phenomenon which is practically inexplicable; yet also as one that requires no explanation at all.
In accordance with a broader methodological shift towards textual analyses of narrative sources, a new history of rape is emerging which is no longer characterised by silence but by a desire to listen to and analyse the testimonies of raped and sexually assaulted women, alleged rapists, and witnesses.3 This approach raises a number of important methodological and conceptual issues concerning both the complex relationship between language, event and interpretation, and the difficulties inherent in locating rape as a historically specific rather than as a transhistorical phenomenon. In this essay, I explore some of these issues through an analysis of well over 100 seventeenth-century narratives. These are drawn from a range of common
and
In early modern England, rape – a capital crime – constituted about 1 per cent of indicted felonies. Guilty verdicts were rare, although a majority of convicted rapists were hanged. Attempted rape – a misdemeanour – likewise formed only a tiny minority of prosecutions for assault although the conviction rate may have been higher. Early modern historians have paid little attention to rape and other forms of sexual violence. Those few who have considered it have focused predominantly upon the incidence of prosecutions relative to other crimes and, working on the sensible assumption that the majority of rapes and sexual assaults were never reported, have been concerned with why this might have been so.2 Yet the social history of rape in early modern England could be described as a non-history, a history of absence. Rape is defined and interpreted in terms of the silence of historical actors, the impediments to successful prosecution, a perceived lack of historical evidence, and the limitations of early modern criminal court records as sources. It appears in its nascent historiography as a phenomenon which is practically inexplicable; yet also as one that requires no explanation at all.
In accordance with a broader methodological shift towards textual analyses of narrative sources, a new history of rape is emerging which is no longer characterised by silence but by a desire to listen to and analyse the testimonies of raped and sexually assaulted women, alleged rapists, and witnesses.3 This approach raises a number of important methodological and conceptual issues concerning both the complex relationship between language, event and interpretation, and the difficulties inherent in locating rape as a historically specific rather than as a transhistorical phenomenon. In this essay, I explore some of these issues through an analysis of well over 100 seventeenth-century narratives. These are drawn from a range of common
and