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Sexual Violence as a Social Crime in Early Modern English Court Records and Literature 
Alexa Kupor, Stanford University ’25 

 

Abstract: This paper explores the definition of ‘rape’ as depicted through early modern English 
court records and literature, arguing that contemporary sources viewed the crime as one of 
primarily social origin and impact. Both accused perpetrators and alleged victims of sexual 
violence in this time used social defenses and critiqued the social reputation of their opposition 
in order to further their case. The court records archives from England’s Old Bailey, formal 
central criminal court of London – and literature – Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece – under 
examination provide textual evidence portraying the ways in which social interactions and 
standings were intertwined with the public’s judgment towards ones propensity to either enact or 
experience rape. 

  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



In early modern Europe, the precise definition of sexual crimes remained largely elusive 
as authorities attempted to place personally nuanced sexual violations into the confines of black-
and-white legal, medical, and social systems. Lawyers, doctors, scholars, and other officials 
prioritized various aspects of the crime – including its criminal consequences, physical evidence, 
or religious and moral implications – in their individual works to understand the nature of such a 
transgression. Nonetheless, they largely agreed upon one aspect of sexual violence: it qualified 
as a primarily social – rather than personal, psychological, emotional, or physical – crime 
impacting various parties beyond the individual upon whom it was committed. As a reflection of 
this perception, mentions of the social status of both victims and perpetrators before and after an 
instance of sexual violence abound in early modern source material; these references could be 
utilized as either a way to argue for a defendant’s innocence on the basis of his superior social 
standing or to support the victim’s testimony by citing a loss of the social respect she once 
maintained as a result of this violation. In this paper, I argue that a comparison between public 
trial records from early modern England – specifically, the London Old Bailey proceedings 
beginning in 1674 – and Shakespeare’s 1594 work The Rape of Lucrece offers evidence for the 
conception of rape as a primarily social transgression. This is supported through the works’ 
suggestion that the ability to both rape and be raped was a consequence of social standing as well 
as their descriptions of the reverberations of rape throughout a victim’s broader community. 
These two source materials, though vastly different in style and intended audience, are 
particularly revealing of contemporary social and legal dynamics, as they provide perspectives 
from both the criminal, and legislative sphere and the common understanding of sexual violence 
and its consequences. Shakespeare’s piece offers a detailed account of a particular instance of 
sexual violation, while the Old Bailey database supplies myriad early modern examples of such 
phenomena and their various means of resolution, supplying a comparison between accounts 
within entertainment media and concrete case material.  

Both the Old Bailey public records and Shakespeare’s piece contribute to general 
characterizations of what made a man more likely to rape in addition to which traits rendered a 
woman more ‘rapable’ in early modern England. These conceptions emphasize the social nature 
of sexual violence, as they crafted a clear link between one’s prior social standing and an 
accompanying vulnerability to rape or be raped. In the Old Bailey records, for example, men 
found guilty of rape are frequently portrayed as inherently evil or socially inferior individuals; 
thus, their sexual crime is depicted not as an affront to a previously glossy reputation, but as a 
natural extension of their prior behaviors and place within society. An emphasis on descriptions 
of defendants as “lusty” men known for “drinking somtimes to excessive [sic]” or who are 
particularly prone to engaging in “lewdness or debauchery” in the records suggests that the 
public understood rape as a crime carried out by those previously recognized for immorality and  
a lowly social status (Old Bailey Proceedings, September 1677, 20 January 1686, 25 February 
1685, trial 16770906, OA16860120, 16850225). This also had the effect of separating men 
viewed as ‘capable’ of rape from more socially respectable classes of society; as I will later 
argue, this presented a challenge when a woman claimed that a man of reputable social standing 



had committed an act of sexual violence against her. Similarly, in some cases, establishing a low 
social evaluation of an accused perpetrator could serve as adequate reason for a judge to declare 
him guilty independent of the victim’s testimony, proving the immense credibility social status 
held in determining one’s ability to commit a sexual crime. The unequal weighting of victim 
testimony compared to the accused’s own prior social standing extended into Old Bailey records 
and reflects the power of establishing a man as capable of rape by virtue of his social standing in 
persuading judges to declare a guilty verdict.  

Likewise, in The Rape of Lucrece, the lustful characteristics of Tarquin, who ultimately 
commits rape upon the titular character, are consistently emphasized and condemned; yet, this 
negative portrayal of the man’s sexual ills is not utilized merely to criticize the damage he 
imposes upon his victim, but rather to depict the crime as a result of Tarquin’s co-optation by 
transgressive desire, thus reconciling the ability to rape with his previously reputable social 
status. Shakespeare describes the “lustful lord” Tarquin as “bewitch’d with lust’s foul charm” 
and controlled “by brain-sick rude desire,” implying that he does not accurately represent the 
entire social class of soldiers and noblemen but is instead exploited by an externally-imposed 
immorality that contributes to an increased propensity to commit sexual violence (Shakespeare, 
1594, lines 169-175). This language depicts lust as a distinct entity capable of exacting authority 
over Tarquin’s actions by ‘bewitching’ his conscience, thus rendering Tarquin uniquely favored 
to commit rape yet simultaneously removing a portion of the impetus to do so from his social 
identification as a lord and placing it onto an independent force, improving the social conception 
of the lordship more broadly. Shakespeare’s rhetoric concedes that even the highest social 
classes could be victims of imposed lustful influences, yet the suggestion that Tarquin’s crime 
was a result of this co-opted conscience rather than his own inherent nature protects the intrinsic 
social reputation of the lordship. Ultimately, the piece strengthens the perception of social 
attributes as decisive factors in one’s tendency to commit sexual violence by depicting Tarquin 
as a rare, explainable exception to a norm in which lustfulness and social reputability are largely 
irreconcilable.  

Conversely, the source material also crafts an opposing archetypal image of the socially 
honorable man who is intrinsically immune from rape accusations, despite what an examination 
of his behaviors may indicate. Just as establishing a man’s low social honor could serve as a 
more adequate reason to find him guilty of rape than could a woman’s testimony of his crime, 
the reverse also remained true; a high social reputation could overpower the conflicting 
testimony of a man’s alleged victim. In one Old Bailey case from 1677, the records do not deny 
the woman’s claim that “by violence” and “against her consent” the accused “had his will of 
her,” yet this man is ultimately acquitted, partially due to him “having a good repute among his 
neighbours” (OBP, 6 September 1677, trial 16770906). This reference to reputation intertwines 
the capacity to rape with one’s social standing, insinuating that an exemplary social influence is 
enough to overpower accusations of sexual wrongdoing, whether or not those accusations’ 
credibility is fully examined. An additional case that took place in 1685 remarks that as the 
accused perpetrator was able to bring “[diverse] People to [justify] his used behaviour and 



modest Carriage all along,” his social standing ultimately “over ballanced [sic]” victim and 
prosecutor testimonies and led to not only an acquittal, but the conclusion that the victim, a five-
year-old girl, had used the rape accusation “as a design to get money out of the Prisoner” (OBP, 
25 February 1685, trial 16850225). Such rhetoric indicates that determining guilt in early modern 
rape trials was not merely a question of if sexual violence had occurred, but a consideration of 
whether a perpetrator’s social standing superseded the credibility of the accuser. Therefore, even 
men who could otherwise be proven to have committed a sexual crime may have been acquitted 
because their social reputation rendered these acts incompatible with their prior nature. For this 
reason, victims “often sought a person with authority,” like a master of the house, “to help them 
denounce their attacker,” particularly if the victim was, herself, from a lowly social class and the 
perpetrator enjoyed a greater level of social repute (Steinberg, 2020, p. 9). Additional Old Bailey 
cases describe a victim’s claims of experiencing bodily damage as a result of sexual violence as 
failing to constitute “possitive [sic] Evidence of a Rape, under those circumstances the Law 
requires it,” insinuating that victim testimony alone, without social corroboration, may have been 
granted minimal credibility (OBP, 12 May 1687, trial t16870512-34). Social evidence 
communicating a man’s inability to carry out rape thus often received equivalent or greater 
consideration than more telling, tangible forms of proof.  

In addition to drawing on social circumstances to produce archetypes of men who were 
more or less likely to be perceived as capable of committing rape, the Old Bailey records and 
The Rape of Lucrece also contribute to conceptions of various women’s ‘rapability.’ This 
spectrum refers not to the theoretical possibility that the physical act of forced sexual intercourse 
could be carried out against a woman, but rather to whether such an act qualified as an affront to 
social status and thus fit the popular definition of rape at the time. In the case of the Old Bailey 
records, it appears that in order to reach this threshold, the woman must first have demonstrated 
that she once had adequate social honor – such as prior virginity – that could have been 
diminished by sexual violence. Failure to establish this initial honorability often meant a guilty 
verdict was highly unlikely to be achieved. Even within testimony concerning a sexual crime, 
women “had a strong motive to pass over sexual details” in order to prevent tarnishing their 
“reputation” or “displaying knowledge that showed a lack of modesty” (Steinberg, 2020, p. 14). 
For many women, successful testimony required a meticulous arrangement of details and 
rhetoric that emphasized her own social reputation while simultaneously proving her loss of such 
honorability without associating herself with an inherent propensity for sexual transgression. In 
this sense, a rape trial represented the point at which “the inner act of violence is thus turned into 
a public spectacle, its victim into an actor” where her “ability to perform according to a script 
determines the successfulness of the legal appeal” (Pallotti, 2013, p. 219). That such legal 
proceedings may be characterized as a type of performance underscores their socially 
consequential nature. As a further reflection of the social characteristics of these cases, men 
accused of rape often employed witnesses to attest to a woman’s social inferiority, emphasizing 
that she came from “a dissolute Life, and of no good Name, having been a Companion of Idle 
and Loose Fellows” or that, despite her individual reputation, her “Parents were of no good 



Repute,” according to Old Bailey cases from 1687 and 1693, respectively (OBP, 7 December 
1687, 26 April 1693, trial 16871207, t16930426-86). That in each of these cases the man was 
acquitted portrays the gravity that a woman’s ‘unrapability’ as a consequence of low social 
regard held in determining the possibility – or lack thereof – that rape had occurred. Attacks on a 
woman’s ability to fulfill her expected domestic social duties could also contribute to her status 
as a less ‘rapable’ and credible victim; in a case from 1689, the accused’s witnesses described 
“that the Woman kept a Bad House, of no good Credit, and that several Evil Deeds were done 
there,” and the man was ultimately found not guilty despite the presence of additional evidence 
that “corroborated” the woman’s account that he had raped her (OBP, 11 December 1689, trial 
16891211). Evidently, a woman’s prior social disrepute, whether based on her individual nature, 
the status of her friends and family, or her noncompliance with gendered social obligations could 
significantly weaken the applicability of the contemporary legal understanding of rape to her 
case; this ultimately strengthens the idea that such an understanding was rooted in an affront to 
social standing.  

While trial records from this era produce an image of the woman who may have been 
unable to claim the occurrence of rape based on her social characteristics, The Rape of Lucrece, 
alternatively, uses the character of Lucrece to represent the most extreme form of ‘rapability’ 
that existed within women. From the opening of the play, Lucrece is depicted as the archetypally 
pure wifely figure, an identity which her husband Collatine consistently flaunts as he “[extolls] 
the incomparable chastity of his wife” (Shakespeare, 1594, line 0.21). This ideal of purity and 
grace is so omnipresent throughout the work that, as one scholar writes, “‘Lucrece’ becomes a 
metonym for chastity” (Quay, 1995, 5). Lucrece’s name is rarely written without a preceding 
adjective that describes her as “modest” or “holy-thoughted,” which linguistically cements the 
inseparability of the woman from her moral glory (Shakespeare, 1594, lines 123, 384). The work 
suggests that these defining characteristics ultimately contribute to Lucrece’s heightened 
vulnerability to rape; as her social value increases in tandem with greater chastity, she possesses 
much more social power to lose from a potential sexual violation. Despite an assumption of 
readers’ knowledge that Lucrece, a married woman, has likely engaged in sexual activity with 
Collatine, her rape is nonetheless depicted as engendering the same momentous loss as if she 
were previously a virgin. For Tarquin, the rape qualifies as “defloration,” a great detriment to 
Lucrece’s social standing, not in spite, but “because of the perfect chastity of Lucrece,” for “such 
chastity in the matron bequeaths a kind of virginity, metaphorically regenerating the hymen” 
(Baines, 1998, p. 85). Thus, it is precisely Lucrece’s prior association with supreme chastity that 
elevates the perceived gravity of the crime committed against her, which traces a link between 
her initial social characterization and her vulnerability to the social consequences of rape – 
namely, its theft of virginity and wifely potential. In the early modern legal realm, a woman’s 
prior virginity increased “the quality of the loss” incurred as a result of sexual violence, and  
though Lucrece was likely not a virgin at the time of her rape in the literal sense, her social 
representation to public audiences associated her with a symbolic, untouchable virginity (Pallotti, 
2013, 216). Henry de Bracton, an English legal theorist of the Middle Ages whose influence 



persisted into the early modern period, claimed that “to defile a virgin and to lie with one defiled 
[are different deeds],” and as Tarquin’s crime was categorized under the former, the social 
consequences gained increased severity (Baines, 1998, p. 71). Similarly, Shakespeare writes that 
“beauty” has the ability to “persuade the eyes of men” and questions why Collatine shares 
descriptions of his virtuous wife which “he should keep unknown,” insinuating that Lucrece’s 
chastity not only increases her potential social power to be lost by rape but also that these 
exemplary traits claim a portion of the blame for provoking Tarquin to act on his attraction 
(1594, lines 29-34). This is reminiscent of the aforementioned depictions of Tarquin as 
“bewitch’d” by lust, which isolates him from his honorable social identity – in order to produce a 
social ‘justification’ for his act – and diminish his autonomy in carrying out the rape in order to 
protect the honorability of the class of noblemen.  

The severity of this rape is acutely understood by Lucrece, who describes a complete loss 
of her sense of self and presentation to others as a consequence of her destroyed chastity. The 
“virtuous monument” she once symbolized for all Roman women transforms into what she 
describes as “poor wasting monuments of lasting moans,” while she begins to dress “in 
mourning black” as a reflection of her symbolic grief for a lost piece of her identity 
(Shakespeare, 1594, lines 391, 798, 1587). Evidently, the image of model purity around which 
Lucrece’s social identity was once meticulously fashioned no longer remains intact following her 
sexual violation, and this violation itself largely occurred, as Shakespeare suggests, due to this 
same exemplary righteousness. Lucrece’s own dialogue and behaviors lend support to the idea of 
her purity contributing to an enhanced ‘rapability’; as she mourns an essential piece of her 
characterization to external audiences due to sexual violation, she aligns with the conception of 
rape as a crime of social motives and consequences. Lucrece’s self and social identities are so 
utterly destroyed following her rape that the decision “to live on casts doubt on her honor, her 
person, her symbolic place,” and since Lucrece can no longer exist as the honorable self she once 
was, she chooses to end her life completely rather than continue to live as a foreign, unchaste 
woman (Belsey, 2001, p. 333). Lucrece possesses the prior social power necessary to argue that a 
major loss in social standing has occurred as a result of rape; this contrasts with the women 
depicted in early modern trial records who often lost their cases as a result of a lowly social 
status that rendered the phenomenon of ‘rape’ impossible to be committed upon their bodies and 
identities, no matter the physical acts which may have occurred.  

Finally, beyond constructing spectrums of individuals’ capability to rape or be raped, 
early modern source materials exhibit references to additional phenomena such as marriage, 
financial support, and property transfers – essential social interactions – as key factors in the 
initiation and resolution of rape cases. Many rape cases were not brought to trial immediately 
after the crime was alleged to have occurred; this gap of time could have resulted when the 
parties involved waited to determine if a marriage or other internal resolution could be arranged  
before filing a lawsuit. If the families of the perpetrator and the victim could reconcile with a 
marriage between the two, the now-unchaste woman would not be forced to endure the challenge 
of finding a socially and economically advantageous marriage partner while sexually ‘impure’ 



and thus largely undesirable. This is reminiscent of the early modern phenomenon of claiming 
seduction by promise of marriage – a claim which could, if successful, effectively “restore the 
woman’s honor and her status as marriageable” by establishing that she only engaged in sexual 
activity as a result of ultimately moral intentions (Dyer, 2003, p. 444). An Old Bailey case from 
1678 remarks, regarding the perpetrator of a rape towards his victim, “that he gave her money 
afterwards,” suggesting an additional attempt towards resolving a case of sexual violence 
through financial support, which could maintain a woman’s social standing through bolstering 
her marriage dowry (OBP, 11 December 1678, trial t16781211e-2). This payment could also 
dissuade a woman from filing a rape case, as the accused perpetrator may portray the interaction 
as consensual, paid sex rather than a forced violation. Not only does the use of marriage as a 
resolution to sexual crimes portrays the social nature of such transgressions, but it also reflects 
how these crimes implicated entire families in a web of threatened social honor.  

The Rape of Lucrece does not exemplify the same concerns over marriage, as Lucrece is 
married to Collatine before the rape occurs, yet it similarly portrays rape as a thread within a 
broader tangle of social and political dynamics. As Roman soldiers in the 500s BC, Tarquin and 
Collatine not only fight with one another but also against each other as they compete to gain 
social and political roles within a rapidly transforming society. Tarquin’s decision to rape 
Lucrece is likened to “high treason,” reflecting the broader political context within the rhetoric 
associated with sexual crime (Shakespeare, 1594, line 369). Likewise, Lucrece’s breasts, from 
Tarquin’s perspective, are described as “ivory globes” reminiscent of “a pair of maiden worlds 
unconquered,” which represents a transference of the language of politics, territorial conquering, 
and competition between masculine ambitions to Lucrece’s physicality (Shakespeare, 1594, lines 
407-408). That Tarquin tells Lucrece that he has “come to scale thy never-conquer’d fort” 
similarly places her chastity within the context of land to be claimed, rendering her body a 
symbol of conquerance and ownership (Shakespeare, 1594, lines 481-482). Evidently, “the 
power struggle between and among men,” symbolized by Lucrece’s body as an opportunity for 
territorial conquest, constitutes what is “always at issue in the poem” (Baines, 1998, p. 85). 
Indeed, by committing suicide, Lucrece reflects this same dynamic, remaining “within the 
structure of militaristic conquest and masculine conflict that motivated the rape in the first place” 
by prompting her own death (Belsey, 2001, p. 327). The intertwining of the rape within broader 
political conflicts underscores the inseparability of sexual violence from social circumstances 
and hierarchies; just as Old Bailey records describe rape cases as a platform for the settlement of 
social conflict, Lucrece’s rape serves as a progression within a national social and political 
context. The violation against Lucrece thus stands as a threat towards a much greater collective, 
as the “rape is seen to be not a crime against an individual, but an offence against a civilisation” 
(Smith, 2005, p. 25). Believing her social degradation to be unable to be rectified, Lucrece 
claims that “if I die, my honor lives in thee; but if I live, thou livest in my  
defame” (Shakespeare, 1594, lines 1032-1033). Her choice to opt for the former represents her 
awareness of the social implications entangled within sexual violence and the broader context 
within which her rape falls. Such a decision emphasizes the capability of rape to implicate a vast 



network of individuals within literal and figurative battles for honor, control, and conquerance; 
the stretch of such a crime reaches far beyond the individual upon which it is perpetrated.  

Evidently, the Old Bailey trial records and Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece provide 
vast textual support for the representation of sexual violence in the early modern period as a 
crime of both social roots and social consequences. Through the production of a spectrum of a 
man’s capacity to rape and a woman’s ability to claim having experienced rape within the public, 
it is clear that individuals’ place within social hierarchies impacted society’s views towards their 
sexual propensities and potential for victimization. Yet, sexual crimes also extended far beyond 
the singular victim and perpetrator; as the source material exhibits, decisions to initiate trials, 
prosecution and defense strategies, and perceptions of threatened honorability involved broad 
familial and community webs. While The Rape of Lucrece tells the tale of just one case of sexual 
violence set long before the period in which it was written, its underlying meanings align closely 
with the perceptions of rape that took hold in the early modern English society in which 
Shakespeare lived and wrote, and the Old Bailey records prove the contemporary manifestations 
of these social attitudes within legal proceedings and case resolutions. These considerations 
underscore the immense importance of social honor and credibility in the early modern period 
and the consequences that could result in tandem with their diminishing; as the sources 
underscore, individuals and communities were often willing to perform whatever narratives were 
necessary in order to restore the honor of both their own generation and that of all potential 
progeny.  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



References 
Baines, Barbara J. (1998). Effacing Rape in Early Modern Representation. ELH, 65(1), 69–98.  

http://www.jstor.org/stable/30030170.  
 
Belsey, Catherine. (2001). Tarquin Dispossessed: Expropriation and Consent in “The Rape of  

Lucrece.” Shakespeare Quarterly, 52(3), 315–335. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3648682.  
 

Cohen, Elizabeth S. (2000). The Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi: A Rape as History. The 
Sixteenth Century Journal, 31(1), 47–75. https://doi.org/10.2307/2671289.  
 
Dyer, Abigail. (2003). Seduction by Promise of Marriage: Law, Sex, and Culture in Seventeenth- 

Century Spain. The Sixteenth Century Journal, 34(2), 439–455.  
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Old Bailey Proceedings (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0), Ordinary of Newgate’s  

Account, 5 July 1676 (OA16760705).  
 

---. September 1677 (16770906). 
 

---. 11 December 1678, trial of Stephen Arrowsmith (t16781211e-2). 
 
---. 25 February 1685, trial of Walter Butcher (t16850225-43). 
 
---. Ordinary of Newgate’s Account, 20 January 1686 (OA1686012). 
 
---. 12 May 1687, trial of William Webb (t16870512-34). 
 
---. 7 December 1687, trial of William Row (16871207). 
 
---. 11 December 1689, trial of Daniel Ashford (t16891211-28). 
 
---. 26 April 1693 (t16930426-86). 
 

Pallotti, Donatella. (2013). Maps of Woe Narratives of Rape in Early Modern England. Journal  
of Early Modern Studies, 2, 211-239. https://doi.org/10.13128/JEMS-2279-7149-12637.  

 
Quay, Sara E. (1995). “Lucrece the chaste”: The Construction of Rape in Shakespeare’s  



‘The Rape of Lucrece.’ Modern Language Studies, 25(2), 3–17.  
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“Lucrece.” Critical Survey, 17(3), 15–26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41556127.  
 
Steinberg, Sylvie. (2020). Reading and interpreting accounts of rape in the criminal archives  

(early modern Europe). Translated by Andrew Rubens. Clio. Women, Gender, History,  
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