Crime in the Middle Ages

The law was extremely harsh in England in the Middle Ages. Those in charge of the law did believe that the people could only learn how to behave if they were afraid of what would happen if they went against the law. Even the “smallest” crimes had severe punishments. The higher-classed people feared the poor because there were a lot more poor people than there were rich people. Any revolt could hurt the nobles. The Peasants Revolt of 1381 proved that much.

The law in England improved because Henry II sent out judges from London to deal with cases throughout England. Each person who’d been accused of a crime had to go through something called an ordeal. There were three of them:

-Ordeal by fire:

The person who had been accused would hold a hot iron bar and would walk three paces. After, their hand was all bandaged up and was to be left alone for exactly three days. If the wound was healing after three days, you were considered innocent. If not, you were “proven” guilty.

-Ordeal by water:

The person would be tied up and thrown into a body of water, like a lake or something. If that person would float you were guilty. If you sank, you were innocent. Sometimes they would tie a rope around the person’s waist so if you were innocent, you could be pulled out if you started to sink.

-Ordeal by combat:

This ordeal was mostly used by nobles that had been accused of a crime. They would fight with the person who accused them of whatever crime they were accused of. Whoever won the fight was the right one. Whoever lost usually died at the end of the fight.

In the year of 1215, the Pope said that priests in England couldn’t help out with ordeals. Ordeals were then replaced by trials by juries. The people didn’t like this because they felt like their neighbours could use a trial to get revenge on them if they had a grudge against them. After the year of 1275, a new law was introduced. It was that people were allowed to be tortured if they said they would not to go to trial that had a jury.

If you were found guilty of the crime you were accused of, you would be facing severe punishment. Thieves would have had their hands cut off for punishment. Women who murdered were strangled, then burnt. People who hunted illegally in royal areas had their ears cut clean off, and treason was punishable by being hung and other forms of execution. There weren’t many prisons because they cost money and local communities would not pay for them to be maintained. It was always cheaper to execute a guilty person for their crimes. It was also cheaper to just mutilate them, and then let them go.

Most towns had place to hang people just outside of them. When people were hung, their bodies were left to rot over the weeks and served as a warning to others to not commit crime. 

By Kerigan Geerts