James Sharpe - A Fiery & Furious People: A History of Violence in England

From the tragic tale of Mary Clifford, whose death at the hands of her employer scandalised Georgian London, to an account of the violent activities of Victorian Manchesters scuttling gangs, via a character portrait of the duel-obsessed Cavalier Sir John Reresby, A Fiery & Furious People explores the brutal underside of our national life in all its variety. And as it considers the litany of assaults, murders and riots that pepper our history it also traces the subtle shifts that have taken place both in the nature of violence and in peoples attitudes to it. Why was it, for example, that wife-beating could once be simultaneously legal and so frowned upon that persistent offenders might well end up being ducked in the village pond? When did the serial killer first make an appearance in the annals of English crime? How could football be regarded at one moment as a raucous pastime that should be banned and the next as a respectable sport that should be encouraged? What gave rise to particular types of violent criminal medieval outlaws, Georgian highwaymen, Victorian garrotters and what made them dwindle and then vanish?

Throughout, Professor James Sharpe draws on an astonishingly wide range of material court records and murder pamphlets, popular ballads and novels, sermons and films to paint vivid pictures of the nations criminals and criminal system from medieval times to the present day. He gives a strong sense of what it was like to be caught up in, say, a street brawl in medieval Oxford or a battle during the English Civil War. And he also seeks to answer perhaps the most fascinating and fundamental question of all: is a country that has experienced not only constant aggression on an individual scale but also the Peasants Revolt, the Gordon Riots, the Poll Tax protests and the the urban unrest of summer 2011 naturally prone to violence or are we, in fact, gradually becoming a gentler nation?

James Sharpe was Professor of History at the University of York from 1997 until his retirement in 2016, and is now Professor Emeritus. He is a leading social historian, with a particular interest in the history of crime. He has published widely on the subject and is a committee member of the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice. His books include Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England 15501750 (1996) and Dick Turpin: the Myth of the English Highwayman (2004).

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Epub ISBN: 9781446456132

Version 1.0

Published by Random House Books 2016

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Copyright James Sharpe, 2016
Cover:
18th-century chapbook illustration of the Gordon Riots Bridgeman Images
demonstration, London, 1977 Magnum photos/Chris Steele-Perkins
Design Natascha Nel

James Sharpe has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Random House Books

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781847945136

Most of my research and publication since I began work on my Oxford DPhil thesis in 1968 has been on the history of crime in early modern England, and as that research developed I became increasingly interested in violence as a historical phenomenon. At the same time, teaching the social history of the early modern period led me to take an interest in peasant revolt and other forms of popular disturbance, while the burgeoning of gender history from the early 1980s onwards encouraged me to deepen my understanding of domestic violence and rape as historical phenomena. I had also, via working on pamphlets dealing with murder (and latterly witchcraft) trials, begun to ponder on some of the broader, longer-term implications of media representations of violence. These various interests were brought together when I was successful in obtaining funding, under the aegis of the Economic and Social Research Councils Violence Research Programme, for a research project on violence in Lancashire and Cheshire between 1600 and 1800. While I was working on the project between 1998 and 2000, I found myself in productive scholarly debate with historians working on more recent periods, and with sociologists and criminologists. These experiences helped me decide to try to put together a book on the long-term history of violence in England between the late middle ages and the present day. I am also acutely aware that violence remains a major preoccupation of modern society, in the United Kingdom as elsewhere, and I was intrigued by what resonances the study of violent behaviour in the past, and representations of it, might have for our current situation.

I have engaged with a number of historians and their publications while formulating my ideas on the history of violence, notably Robert Muchembled, Randolph Roth, Pieter Spierenburg and John Carter Wood, while I have also received unfailing support from my wife, Krista Cowman, my literary agent, Jane Turnbull, and Nigel Wilcockson at Random House. I have further benefitted from discussing this book as it progressed with my York colleagues Mark Roodhouse and Craig Taylor, and from giving papers as my research on violence developed to conferences at Bern, Brussels, Jyvskyl, Leicester, Leiden, Liverpool, Lyon, Montpellier, Oxford and Rotterdam. Most of the research for this book has been carried out in the J. B. Morrell and Raymond Burton Libraries of the University of York, or on electronic resources made available by them. I have also made use of the holdings of the Borthwick Institute for Archives, York; Cheshire Archives and Local Studies; and The National Archives (TNA) Kew, London. I acknowledge Crown copyright in TNA documents and modern government publications cited.

The title of the book is derived from one of the possible translations of the chronicler Jean Froissarts description gens foursens et esragis which he applied to the rebels in London in June 1381, during that mass-uprising we know as the Peasants Revolt. In a sense, this book describes how, over the long term, the English people became less fiery and furious. One has to hope that they will not become so again.