Medieval Punishments

It's often thought that in medieval times, crime was mostly dealt with by execution. The purpose of punishments in medieval times was to scare others into complying with the law, so the punishments given out were often harsh and execution was certainly a central pillar of the medieval punishment scheme. It's true that there were many executions, but they were used alongside fines, public shaming and forms of corporal punishment. So, what methods of punishment were used in medieval times, and how did they change throughout the period?

Common punishments in the Middle Ages

The Normans tended to favour harsher punishments more often than the Anglo-Saxons did. The purpose of punishment was deterrence during both periods, so let's take a look at how the Normans and Anglo-Saxons punished the same crimes.

Types of medieval punishments under Anglo-Saxons and Normans

The purpose of punishment was deterrence. As the methods of crime detection were so basic, the idea was that people needed to be prevented from committing crimes in the first place. This is what led to punishments being so harsh in the limited cases where people were caught. The Church also played an important role in trials and setting punishments.

Under the Normans, punishment continued largely as it had done under the Anglo-Saxons, albeit with an increase in the number of capital offences. Breaking the newly introduced Forest Laws often had severe consequences, including capital punishment. Corporal and capital punishment, as well as public shaming, continued fairly unchanged.

The most common types medieval punishments include:

• imprisonment

• death

• mutilation

• whipping

• fines

Fig. 2 Painting of a Royal Forest

Influence of the Church

The influence of the Church grew under the Normans. Under the Anglo-Saxons, a church could be a place of sanctuary for a criminal - if they got to the church before being apprehended, they were safe for a period of time and couldn't be tried or punished. Under the Normans, this influence became more noticeable with the establishment of church courts.

The Church maintained that the clergy (ordained members of the church) could only be tried in church courts, which had much less severe punishments and did not impose the death penalty. This was known as benefit of clergy. Church courts were also given jurisdiction to try so-called "moral crimes" such as adultery, and the power to punish them.

Under the Normans, the Anglo-Saxon systems of wergild and botgild were abolished and replaced with murdrum. This was essentially the same principle as wergild and botgild, but instead of paying fines to the victim or their family, fines were paid to the King. This was a fundraising tactic, as the Normans needed to raise as much money as possible after the incredibly expensive invasion of England in 1066.

Other Norman developments

While prisons remained a place of detention before trial, the Normans built many castles and abbeys. These had dungeons and prisons where disorderly staff and monks could be held and punished. They were a step towards what we recognise as prisons today.

Under the Normans, the influence of the King and the Church over how crimes were punished grew and laws became more centralised, rather than always relying on the Lord of the Land to try and punish crimes locally, although this was still an essential feature of the Norman justice system.

Medieval capital punishment

Obviously, the more serious the crime, the harsher the punishment. Medival capital punishment was carried out in different forms of execution such as hanging, quartering, or burning. The most common form of execution in Britain was hanging, which was done in public right up until 1868. The most serious crimes included treason and arson. Arson was particularly serious because most infrastructure was made from very flammable materials such as wood and thatch. This meant that any fire was likely to spread very quickly and could easily get out of control. Therefore, it was almost always a capital offence.

In early Anglo-Saxon times, murder was not usually officially punished. Instead, a victim's family had the right to avenge death with death and kill the perpetrator. This led to generation-long blood feuds which the Anglo-Saxons wanted to end. They, therefore, introduced a new system called wergild, to which we will return later.

Poaching was when people would hunt or forage from land they didn't own and didn't have permission to hunt on. Under the feudal system, all land was owned by someone and if it wasn't, it was owned by the Crown. This meant that people needed permission and to pay for licenses to hunt or take firewood, for example. Doing so without permission was a serious offence and often led to execution.

Medival punishment for theft

Corporal punishment was the halfway house between a low-level penalty, such as a fine or public humiliation, and execution. It was usually used for repeat offenders of mid-range crimes, such as theft. This could be anything from public lashes to having a hand or foot cut off.

Theft was a relatively easy crime to commit due to the nature of Anglo-Saxon housing. Large houses had grand estates with forests where criminals could hide and once they had escaped, identifying them was an almost impossible task. This is why methods of punishment were so harsh. A thief caught more than once was sure to be maimed - in part to mark him out to the community as a known thief, and in part to prevent him from being able to commit further crimes.

Other forms of medieval punishment

Low-level crimes such as public drunkenness or disorderly conduct were usually dealt with by public humiliation. This could be time in the pillory or in the stocks. The length of time you had to spend there would correspond to the seriousness of the offence and could last from an hour to a day. Sometimes people were sentenced to be publicly shamed several times in a week or a month for an offence.

Fig. 1 Medieval pillory

Sometimes, a criminal was shamed by having their hands tied to the back of a horse cart and being led through the city before being placed in the pillory or publicly flogged.

As mentioned above, the Anglo-Saxons punished murder under the wergild system. This was a system of fines that the criminal had to pay to the victim's family and the amount depended on the victim's social status - the higher the status, the greater the fine. There was also a fines system for causing bodily injury, called botgild. The amounts varied depending on the seriousness of the injury, as well as cosmetic and economic consequences for the victim.

Anglo-Saxons did not have prisons in the sense that we have them today. A jail was somewhere you were locked up before trial, rather than a place of punishment.

Punishment in the later Middle Ages

The Church and the King continued to have a huge influence over which crimes attracted which punishments. The real differences were how criminals were tried in the courts. Some would say that trial by ordeal was punishment enough!

One new development was the emergence in the late Norman period and into the Later Middle Ages of burning at the stake. This was a punishment usually reserved for religious offences such as heresy and blasphemy. It would also become the method of execution of women for treason. Men who committed treason would be hanged, drawn and quartered, which required them to be naked. However, women were burned at the stake to "preserve their modesty", as they would not have to be stripped naked to be burned.

The church remained a place of sanctuary and church courts strongly resisted attempts to reign in their influence.

Fig. 3 Ordeal by Water