ABSTRACT
This brief chapbook exemplifies the participatory, personal, and opportunistic nature of crime in this period. Many people were involved in bringing Ralph Meaphon, who murdered his wife, to justice. These included his neighbours, the accused’s co-workers, a constable and coroner, the judges of the assize, and, most importantly, a fearless five-year-old boy who twice testified against his father and helped to secure his conviction. As was common at this time, the victim and perpetrator knew each other, and the crime was, by all appearances, one of opportunity, committed in the heat of passion. For all of its unremarkableness, therefore, this case reflects many of the key themes that characterized crime and criminal justice in early modern England. Perhaps the most interesting part of this story is the preface that opens this chapbook. It has strong religious and moral overtones but has little to do with the story of murder that follows. The author is pessimistic about the nature of his fellow man, suggesting that greed, jealousy, fear, vanity, and the Devil constantly tempted husbands to turn against wives, sons against fathers, friends against friends, neighbours against neighbours, and so on. This preface also introduces a key theme in the punishment model of the early modern period: deterrence and reformation. Tales of murder, such as this one, “hath been published for our example to the world, thereby to put us in mind of our duties to God, and withhold us from like trespasses, by viewing their shameful ends”. Thus deterred by their knowledge of crime and its consequences, readers are exhorted to seek reformation by performing charity and good deeds and always living as if they might, at any moment, be called to God’s judgement. Unmentioned by the author, but perhaps more to the point, is the harsh reality that a young boy has lost his parents and will live out his childhood as an orphan.
