Moral Panics, the Media and the Law in Early Modern England

An exploration of links between opinion and governance in Early Modern England, studying moral panics about crime, sex and belief. Hypothesizing that media-driven panics proliferated in the 1700s, with the development of newspapers and government sensibility to opinion, it also considers earlier panics about cross-dressing and witchcraft.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Law and Order, Moral Panics, and Early Modern England; D.Lemmings The Concept of the Moral Panic: An Historico-Sociological Positioning; D.Rowe ''This Newe Army of Satan'': The Jesuit Mission and the Formation of Public Opinion in Elizabethan England; A.Walsham Cross-dressing and Pamphleteering in Early Seventeenth-century London; A.Bayman Fear made Flesh: The English Witch Panic of 1645-47; M.Gaskill ''A sainct in shewe, a Devill in deede'': Moral Panics and Anti-Puritanism in Seventeenth-century England; T.Harris ''Remember Justice Godfrey'': The Popish Plot and the Construction of Panic in Seventeenth-century Media; C.Walker The Dark Side of Enlightenment: The London Journal, Moral Panics and the Law in the Eighteenth Century; D.Lemmings Forgers and Forgery: Severity and Social Identity in Eighteenth-Century Justice; R.McGowen ''How frail are Lovers vows, and Dicers oaths'': Gaming, Governing and Moral Panic in Britain, 1781-1782; D.Andrew A Moral Panic in London, c. 1790: ''The Monster'' and the Press; C.McCreery The British Jacobins: Folk devils in the Age of Counter-Revolution?; M.Davis Conclusion: Moral Panics, Law and the Transformation of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England; D.Lemmings Index