Law and Disorder in Early Modern Wales: Crime and Authority in the Denbeighshire Courts, c. 1660-1730 (University of Wales Press - Studies in Welsh History)

The sheer scale of surviving early modern Welsh court archives attests to the importance of the institutions that produces them—and they have, since the early 1970s, become major sources for a wide range of early modernists, not just those who specialize in criminal procedure. This volume discusses the fundamental and fascinating paradox of the criminal records of the Denbeighshire courts of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, demonstrating their potential to illuminate both order and disorder, law-keepers and law-breakers, and the respectable and the unruly—showcasing early modern authority as both powerful and precarious in light of the shared experiences and attitudes of its local communities.