ABSTRACT
The crime in early modern England, Jim Sharpe drew up a sort of balance sheet of the continuities and changes in crime and the criminal law in his period. Among differences, he listed the criminalisation of the poor and changes in the pattern of punishment: on the one hand, shaming punishments declined, hangings decreased in number, and there was a harder line against out-of-court settlements, while on the other the 'house of correction' was born, which incarcerated criminal convicts sentenced to hard labour. It is disconcerting to find some of the same elements of continuity and change evident in the period. Imprisonment was a small but growing part of the repertoire of penalties. The fifteenth century also seems to witness a more impatient state attitude to sanctuary and clerical immunities, and a gradual fading of the imperative of revenge under the triple assault of the law, the Church and more civilised ideals of behaviour.
