The Making of Felony Procedure in Middle English Literature

Abstract The Making of Felony Procedure in Middle English Literature explores the literary inheritance of criminal procedure in thirteenth to fifteenth century English law, focusing on felony, the gravest common law offense. Left undefined in the law, felony’s definition was left to its practice. But professional lawmen found little of interest in criminal law and so were happy to leave its procedure—from investigation to conviction—fall to local communities who were generally untrained in the law. Left with many practical and ethical questions and few legal answers, they turned to cultural ones, archived in sermons they had heard, plays they had seen, and poetry they knew. This book reads the documents of criminal procedure—coroners’ reports, plea rolls, and gaol delivery records—alongside literary scenes of investigation, interrogation, and witnessing to tell a new intellectual history of criminal procedure’s beginnings. The Making of Felony in Procedure in Middle English Literature’s chapters guide the reader through the steps of a felony prosecution, from act to conviction. It argues that answers they found, and the sources that informed them, created the system that became modern criminal procedure.