Distinctions
England in this era had some positive aspects that set it apart from contemporaneous continental European societies. Torture was rare, since the English legal system reserved torture only for capital crimes like treason—though forms of corporal punishment, some of them extreme, were practised. The persecution of witches began in 1563, and hundreds were executed, although there was nothing like the frenzy on the Continent Mary had tried her hand at an aggressive anti-Protestant Inquisition and was hated for it; it was not to be repeated.
Read more about this topic: Elizabethan Era
Famous quotes containing the word distinctions:
“Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols—it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“Again we have here two distinctions that are no distinctions, but made to seem so by terms invented by I know not whom to cover ignorance, and blind the understanding of the reader: for it cannot be conceived that there is any liberty greater, than for a man to do what he will.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see men in herds for all them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)