Eduqas GCSE History Changes in Crime and Punishment c.500 to present overview quiz quiz

A group of about ten men responsible for each other's behaviour

A tax paid each year to the Church out of what a person grew or earned

A royal court where the King himself heard the most serious criminal cases

A type of prison where suspects were held until their trial took place

By a trial in front of a jury of twelve local men who weighed up the evidence

By trial by ordeal, in which God was thought to reveal the truth

By a professional police force that gathered evidence and questioned suspects

By a fingerprint test taken from the scene and matched to a suspect's hand

A regular wage paid by the Crown to every parish priest in the country

A full pardon granted directly by the King to anyone the Church favoured

A way to escape a harsh royal court by proving you were a clergyman

A Church tax collected from ordinary people to pay for local priests

Because of new scientific discoveries that proved witches were really casting spells

Because the King personally ordered every county to hunt down and try suspected witches

Because the printing press meant spell books were suddenly available to ordinary people

Because of religious turmoil, social stress and figures such as Matthew Hopkins

Economic change swelled the feared wandering poor, the 'sturdy beggars'

They were respected travellers who were welcomed warmly in every town they visited

They were senior Church officials who travelled the country collecting taxes for the Pope

They were wealthy landowners who moved between their many estates across the country

A medieval law book setting out the punishments handed down by the King's courts

A system with over 200 crimes punishable by death, meant to deter by terror

The set of rules and procedures followed by the new Metropolitan Police force

A secret code of signals used by smugglers to move goods past the customs men

There were no judges available to hear the many cases that came before the courts

The King banned the Code outright soon after it had first been brought into force

Juries refused to convict or undervalued stolen goods to avoid hanging

Executions had been made completely illegal across the whole country by Parliament

John Howard, 1777

Elizabeth Fry, 1817

Matthew Hopkins, 1645

Robert Peel, 1829

1789

1829

1868

1965

The separate system of solitary confinement and reform

The Bloody Code, with its long list of crimes punishable by death

Transportation, sending convicted prisoners overseas to Australia

Community service, with offenders doing unpaid work in their town

It has had no effect at all on the way the police catch and identify criminals

Through fingerprinting (1901), DNA profiling (1980s), CCTV and computers

By bringing back the medieval hue and cry, with the whole community joining the chase

By abolishing the police force altogether and replacing it with private detectives

Crime had ended completely, so there was no longer any need for the death penalty

Prisons were so full that there was no room left to hold any condemned prisoners

The King personally ordered Parliament to put an end to the use of the death penalty

Miscarriages of justice and changing attitudes turned opinion against it