| Summary: | The aim of this project was to carry out a systematic investigation and analysis of crimes of violence tried in the courts of the county of Cheshire, in the period 1601-1800. The core of the study is formed by details of homicides prosecuted at the Court of Great Sessions at Chester over this period, with supplementary data dealing with non-homicidal violence, notably from the County Quarter Sessions of Cheshire and the Chester City Sessions. As well as the quantitative results drawn from these samples, analysis of depositions and an account of a murder case in Saighton in 1648, published in the Cheshire Sheaf in 1937, allows the reconstruction of insights into the qualitative and attitudinal aspects of the history of violence. The objectives of the study were: firstly, to add new dimensions to the ongoing debate on the history of violence in England; secondly, to gain insights through the history of violence into the changing social psychology of the early modern English; and, thirdly, to provide a body of material on violence from a past culture which will provide useful points of comparison for studies of violence in modern Britain, as well as providing a body of findings against which current theoretical assumptions about violence might be tested.
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