Briggs et al., Crime and Punishment in England, part I Durston, Crime and Justice in Early Modern England, Chaps 11–12 and Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England, Chaps 2–4.ġ5. The best overviews of Bermuda's early years are Craven, “Introduction to the History of Bermuda” Jarvis, “In the Eyes of All Trade,” Chaps 1–2 and Kennedy, “Anglo-Bermudian Society,” Chap. On the risk of Spanish attack, see MacMillan, Sovereignty and Possession, 131–135. Bilder, Transatlantic Constitution Nelson, Common Law in Colonial America and Offutt, “Atlantic Rules.”ġ3. See also Perrin, Boteler's Dialogues, xx–xxi.ġ2. The text shares some similarities with Smith's Generall Historie, book V, which was published in 1624, and cited “N.B.” as the principal source for Bermuda (190). The other major source for this period is Nathaniel Butler's Historye of the Bermudaes (British Library Sloane MSS 750, 758). This volume is well supplemented by Hollis Hallett, Bermuda under the Sommer Islands Company, Vol. Some of the records in the Bermuda Archives have been published in Lefroy, Memorials. Most of Virginia's General Court records were destroyed in 1865, leaving only fragmentary evidence. For other treatments of this topic, see Tucker, “Crime and Punishment Seventeenth-Century Bermuda Style” and Hollis Hallett, ed., Bermuda under the Sommer Islands Company, 1612–1684, I, ix–xiv.ġ1. Bilder, Transatlantic Constitution, 40.ġ0. 3 “‘Bound by our Regal Office’.” On allegiance, see Jones, “Sir Edward Coke,” and Thompson, “‘The Predicament of Ubi’.”ĩ. 5 Sovereignty and Possession, 36–37 and Chap. On these rights and their applicability in the English Atlantic, see Hulsebosch, “Ancient Constitution” Mancke, “Languages of Liberty” and MacMillan: “Imperial Constitutions,” 78–79 Atlantic Imperial Constitution, 26–28 and Chap. 1 Brooks, Law, Politics, and Society Offutt, “Atlantic Rules,” especially pp. Bilder, Transatlantic Constitution, Chap. Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures, Chaps 1–2 Hulsebosch, “Ancient Constitution and the Expanding Empire” MacMillan, Sovereignty and Possession, 25–31.Ħ. Billings, “Transfer of English Law to Virginia, 1606–50,” 215.ĥ. Especially because of my focus on criminal law, in this essay I prefer to think in terms of pluralism and discretion rather than divergence.Ĥ. See also MacMillan, Sovereignty and Possession in the English New World, 95–96 MacMillan, Atlantic Imperial Constitution, 25–26 MacMillan, “Imperial Constitutions,” 69–70, 79–80 MacMillan, “‘Bound by our regal office’.” Bilder prefers the term “repugnancy and divergence” to describe this principle, although the word “divergence” did not actually appear in any charter. Bilder, Transatlantic Constitution, especially the introduction and Chap. Technically, the resident governor was known as the “deputy governor,” the governor being the head of the Company in London.ģ. Commission to Captain Daniel Tucker, 16 February 1616, Lefroy, ed., Memorials, 107. All quotations in this essay are modernized.Ģ. James I, charter to the Somers Island Company, 29 June 1615, Lefroy, ed., Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of the Bermudas, 91–92, 95.
Partly in reaction to Tucker's rougher methods, Butler, guided by the Somers Island Company, worked to develop a criminal justice system that both reflected the common practices of English criminal law and the unique nature of the Bermuda colony.ġ. Tucker initially employed the martial form of justice then used in Virginia, which helped to ensure the security and safety of the colony in its infancy.
This essay further explores these ideas by examining the rise of criminal courts and punishment in Bermuda during the tenure of two of the colony's earliest governors, Daniel Tucker (1616–1619) and Nathaniel Butler (1619–1622). The application of these clauses facilitated the transfer of English law and the inherited rights of English subjects across the Atlantic while simultaneously ensuring that each colony would possess a unique legal culture. Recent scholars have argued that various clauses in the English Atlantic charters allowed Company bodies, resident governors, and local officials to create and administer legal mechanisms that respected both the wide variety of legal systems used in England and the exigencies of local circumstances, in which for various reasons English law could not always be applied.
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