Holinshed's Chronicles

The Harvard Classics selection for September 16th is a selection from the Holinshed Chronicles.  Holinshed was, among other things, a chronicler working for the printer Reginald Wolfe.  Holinshed was tasked with compiling a chronicle of the history of the world, but in the end only "The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland" was published, in 1577, with a second edition published in 1587.

The Chronicles occur as a series of articles that have been subjected to various attempts at systematization and organization through the years.  The Harvard Classics edition of the Chronicles is drawn from an 1876 condensed edition, and occupies some 176 pages of text in this edition, with subject headings such as "of degrees of people in the commonwealth of Elizabethan England", "of cities and towns", and "of gardens and orchards".  The degrees of people article describes the English population as having four classes of people: gentlemen (i.e. Nobles), citizens or burgesses, yeomen, and artificers or laborers.

yawn.

I was completely baffled at the inclusion of this material in a reading plan that up to this entry seemed to be comprised of the very finest selections from the best literature in the western canon.  How did an encyclopedia by an author I had never heard of make the cut for this literature plan?

It turns out, Shakespeare used the 1587 edition of Holinshed's Chronicles as source material for most of his history plays, as well as Macbeth, King Lear, and Cymbeline.  Every once in a while I get rudely reminded that I am not in fact a scholar of literature! This is one of those humbling times.  You learn something every day if you aren't careful.

The selection from Holinshed for today is "of sundry kinds of punishment appointed for offenders".  Among the items discussed is that thieves who confessed to their crimes were afforded the humane treatment of hanging by the neck until dead, unless they stole from the crown in which case first a hand would be chopped off then they would be hung until dead.  Then, their property reverted to the crown.  Very humane.  And yet, many thieves did not confess.  The odious thief who did not confess was pressed to death, with a sharp stone at their back, and a board on which heavy rocks would be piled on their chest.  The benefit of not confessing is that property did not revert to the crown in that instance, but rather was retained by wife and children, so many accused would remain silent, accepting the fate of pressing, for the well being of their families.

In Halifax a special procedure was in use for thieves of livestock.  A guillotine of sorts was used with a blade attached to a large block of wood, suspended from a rope.  The blade and block would be suspended from the guillotine works with a pin, and a rope would be run from the pin to the animal that had been stolen.  The animal would then be let to run, thus pulling the pin and dropping the blade and block combination to decapitate the offender.  According to Holinshed,

"the head-block, wherein the axe is fastened doth fall down with such a violence that, if the neck of the transgressor were as big as that of a bull, it should be cut in sunder at a stroke and roll from the body by a huge distance."

Descriptions of punishments for many different types of crimes are compiled in this article.  Particularly interesting for social commentary on the times, is a several paragraph discussion of Canutus giving authority to the clergy to punish whoredom, because he felt the penalties were too severe otherwise.  In the hands of the clergy, "no severity was shewed except upon such lay men as had defiled their nuns."

Holingshed's Chronicles are available to be read online at Project Gutenberg.  There is enough social commentary to make the reading interesting, and the historical context of Shakespeare provides a framework for appreciating the work's literary merits.

Comments are welcome, though moderated.