The Common Informer, the Penal Statutes and Economic Regulation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3451552 |
|---|---|
| Authors | M W Beresford (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1957 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 221 |
| Publication date | 1957-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Economic History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2590859 |
| OpenAlex | W2036991896 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 19 |
T HE common informer's power to make money from the misdeeds of others was abolished only in i951.1 An age of police detectives and public prosecutors has seen opinion harden against private enterprise in this field.2 In I934, when the Commons were debating the matter, an M.P. defined the informeras 'the complete sneak', unconsciously echoing the opinion of an aggrieved Tudor leatherworker,3 'hyt was a knaves part to sue ony man upon (the king's) most gracious actes and statutes'. Many acts and statutes once encouraged zeal for the law by offering a share in the penalties. The temptations and abuses in this system were realised by the authors of an interesting draft statute (c.I534) which proposed a special court and an array of district attorneys4 to replace common informers, who only began suits when matters of meum and tuum were involved or else through 'malice, rancour and evill will'. Coke's view,5 just over a century later, was that the informer 'doth vex and pauperise the subject and the community of the poorer sort, for malice or private ends and never for love ofjustice'. It was the marriage of justice with malice or avarice which helped to discredit common informers in the eyes even of those who were not lawbreakers. When innocent and guilty alike were put in peril of a fine, some discredit was bound to fall on the principle of economic regulation, and the Crown could not avoid some share of unpopularity since its own share in the penalties made it a slow convert to schemes of reform. Economic offences were those most zealously pursued, so that the informations provide details of an immense number of transactions in manufacture and trade in the period when the informers were most active, from I550 to i624; they were then a chief instrument for the enforcement of economic legislation and the indirect taxation of the kingdom: after i624, virtually exiled from the courts at Westminster, they remained at Assizes and Quarter Sessions as semi-official guardians of good order, with a tawdry bag of poaching, bastardy and theft.6 Until this
Political science · Statute · Law · Legal principles and applications
Gods, Informers, and the Erotics of Surveillance
The displacement of Providence
Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State
A Study in the Sociology of Religious Persecution
Irish smuggling in the eighteenth century
Stereotypes and Stereotyping in Early Modern England
Corruption, legal solutions and limits of law
"Damn You, You Informing Bitch." Vox Populi and the Unmaking of the Gin Act of 1736
A Predatory Social Structure
Interpreting the market
Jacobitism, Coastal Policing, and Fiscal-Military Reform in England after the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1702
Sex and Societies for Moral Reform, 1688–1800
The Irish customs administration in the sixteenth century
Cheap print, crime and information in early modern London
Informers and Their Social Networks in Eighteenth-Century London
The ‘Mother Gin’ Controversy in the Early Eighteenth Century
The Scottish parliament of 1621
Criminal Organization in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century London
Dearth and the English revolution
| Unique citing works | 19 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,29 |
| Citation span | 1961 - 2023 (63) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 14 |