Words and deeds: gender and the language of abuse in Elizabethan Norfolk

Research into the regulation of speech in early modern England has tended to focus on common scolds and thus on the control of disorderly women. Yet scolds accounted for only a minority of those prosecuted for speech offences in Elizabethan England. If the definition of abusive speech is broadened, then men were as likely to be charged as women. The 1551 Act against Fighting and Quarrelling in Church expanded significantly the ecclesiastical courts’ jurisdiction, contributing to a climate of control over speech. In the archdeaconry of Norwich, almost a thousand people were charged in the 1580s either under the Act or for other forms of ‘heated’ speech. As the Church sought to implement the Reformation, it was most concerned about challenges to the liturgy, clergy and officers. Changes in the language of prosecution show how court priorities were altered. A shift from formulaic Latin to English reflected the disruption of gendered assumptions, as the courts placed new emphasis upon speech actions rather than reputation. To criticize authority was to do more than to speak words; it was to commit an offence. The gendered terms of scolding and brawling were combined in a charge which could be brought against either men or women. Gendered contrasts between male and female speech were maintained, but were pushed aside by concerns about the threat which disorderly speech presented to religious and political authority

Representations of sources and data: working with exceptions to hierarchy in historical documents

No abstract available

The inductive Alperin-McKay and blockwise Alperin weight conditions for blocks with cyclic defect groups

We verify the inductive blockwise Alperin weight (BAW) and the inductive Alperin-McKay (AM) conditions introduced by the second author for blocks of finite quasisimple groups with cyclic defect groups. Furthermore we establish a criterion that describes conditions under which the inductive AM condition for blocks with abelian defect groups implies the inductive BAW condition for those blocks