Gender and Policing in Early Modern England

"This book traces the emergence of a distinctive kind of gendered policing out of older structures of law enforcement and local government, a process which took place in fits and starts over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It does not provide a comprehensive account of the ways in which early modern law enforcement was shaped by gender. The focus is narrower but it is set in a wide analytical frame, drawing inspiration from feminist scholarship on the shifting relationship between gender and the state, especially Carole Pateman's idea of a transition from paternal to fraternal forms of male power"--