ABSTRACT
From the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries, the courts of quarter sessions (or quarter sessions for short) were local courts in the kingdom of England (and Wales) that were traditionally held four times a year in each county. Individuals seeking legal redress could petition the judges (also called justices). Some of these petitions reveal the emotional elements in legal proceedings in sixteenth-century England. In 1589, a prisoner named Ranulphe Cradocke, for instance, petitioned the justices of the Staffordshire Quarter Sessions to act against his own son William whom he accused of failing to support the material needs of his mother and siblings (Ranulphe’s wife and other children). The petition is clearly intended to play on the emotions of the justices and encourage them to act against William, whose behaviour is labelled as ‘contrary to all humanitie christian dewtie & feare of god, and naturall love’. Likewise, in 1594 Allys Whittingham, William Bealey and his wife Margery petitioned the judges of the Cheshire Quarter Sessions to take action against Anne Lingard, whom they accused of unprovoked attacks (‘a matter soe shamfull and unnaturall’) and of leaving a traumatized Allys ‘much affrayd’ for her life.
