The body of Agnes Cheesman's child is found dead, bruised and bloodied; George Wenham's best hog is missing from its pen; John Hooke gets angry and tells Justice Pelham about some suspicious tools that Hooke's master purchased recently. How did incidents like these come to the notice of the law? How were potential suspects singled out? How was evidence assembled to support suspicions? These matters are crucial to our understanding of early modern notions of criminality and order, but because pre-trial depositions were not formally acceptable as evidence, scholars interested in trial procedures have not systematically exploited them. And, because almost no depositions taken in accusations of serious felonies have survived for the early seventeenth century, scholars interested in crime have been similarly cautious. Although the evidence is essentially restricted to thefts tried before the Quarter Sessions, the information in these documents, confused, rambling and one-sided as it may be, allows us to reconstruct the detection of suspects in the countryside of early modern England. In turn, this reconstruction tells us important things about contemporary ideals of behavior, official duty and communal responsibility.

The initial response to alleged crimes in early modern England combined communal and official participation. Since by the seventeenth century private complaints in criminal matters (appeals) had been virtually replaced by public accusations (indictments), public officials should have been in charge of investigations.