civil war in England. He set out four recommendations, one of which was
“the diversion, occupation, and control of the hopeless poor.” But if bread
and circuses did not work, the lower class had to be held in place by the
awful certainty of inexorable and brutal punishment.
The punishments inflicted in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
England were garish, painstaking, and grisly. Convicted political offenders
who were not lucky enough to go directly to the block were usually disem-
boweled while still alive. Then they were quartered. Some criminals were
burned at the stake. Accused but not yet tried prisoners who refused to
plead were often slowly “pressed” to death under heavy weights. However,
the most common form of execution was hanging.
Hanging became London’s main entertainment. If the poor had little
bread, the government at least gave them circuses. One of the more cele-
brated hangings, in 1767, is thought to have been attended by one in ten
inhabitants of London. As many as 25,000 routinely watched lesser hang-
ings. Age was not a mitigating consideration. Children were hanged along-
side adults. But over time the ruling class lost its stomach for cruelty: juries,
judges, and even the king began to fudge the requirements of the law. If a
prisoner could read, he could plead “of clergy,” since by medieval custom it
was assumed that anyone who could read was a clergyman. A pregnant
woman could plead her “belly” as being “great with child.” They thus
avoided the noose.
The man, woman, or child who was not hanged had to be imprisoned.
Consequently, the prisons were soon overflowing. Building prisons was
expensive, so lower-class prisoners were bundled down into dark cellars
with scores or hundreds of others. There they sat or lay, often in chains and
in their own excrement until they rotted, starved, or died. But if a prisoner
did not die quickly, despite being given every opportunity by malnutrition,
unsanitary conditions, and utter hopelessness, what could be done with
him? The answer set forth at about the time the American colonies were
being established, in the “Acte for Punishment of Rogues, Vagabonds, and
Sturdy Beggars,” was being sent to the colonies as a virtual slave. In the
eighteenth century this practice resulted in a flood of emigrants: about 6 in
each 1,000 inhabitants were being shipped out of England.
Since exiles were often sold into slavery, kidnapping became a prof-
72 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA