1650: when England made adultery a capital crime

What did the 1650 Act say?

The Act of 10 May 1650 was titled 'An Act for suppressing the detestable sins of Incest, Adultery and Fornication', and it applied to offences committed from 24 June 1650 ^[1]. Modern writers often call it the Adultery Act 1650, a label of convenience rather than the Act's own title. It dealt with four things: incest, adultery, fornication and the keeping of brothels. The first two were capital crimes, the third a matter for imprisonment, and the fourth a matter for corporal punishment and, on repetition, death ^[1].

Incest was defined by a long list of relatives, by blood and by marriage, and the penalty was death as in a felony, without benefit of clergy, for anyone who confessed or was convicted. Marriages within these degrees were declared void and the children of such unions illegitimate, with no right to inherit by descent ^[1]. Adultery meant sex between a married woman and a man other than her husband, and both partners faced the same punishment ^[1][3].

Fornication was defined as sex between a man and a virgin, an unmarried woman or a widow, and the woman was liable as well as the man. The Wikipedia summary adds that the man could be married or unmarried ^[3]. The definition of adultery looked at the woman's status only, so a married man who had sex with an unmarried woman was guilty of fornication, not adultery ^[1][3].

The Act also set out how trials should run. Justices of Assize on their circuits and justices of the peace at general sessions had to present the offences to the grand jury, and mayors and justices in cities, boroughs and corporate towns were empowered to hear and determine them ^[1]. Local custom could not override the Act. It was a statute for the secular courts, which is the main reason for its unusual place in English legal history.

Offences and penalties under the Act of 10 May 1650 (in force from 24 June 1650)

Offence	Who was covered	Penalty	Notes
Incest	Both parties; a long list of blood and marriage relatives	Death as a felony, without benefit of clergy	Such marriages void; children treated as illegitimate [1]
Adultery	A married woman and the man who had sex with her	Death as a felony, without benefit of clergy, for both	Exceptions for rape, an unaware man, and a husband absent or reported dead [1]
Fornication	A man (married or unmarried) and a virgin, unmarried woman or widow	Three months in common gaol without bail, then security for a year's good behaviour	No harsher penalty for repeat offenders is written into the text [1]
Bawdry or brothel keeping	Any common bawd, man or woman, or keeper of a common brothel	First offence: whipping, pillory, branding with a B, three years' hard labour. Second offence: death	The only offence in the Act where repetition leads to the gallows [1]

How were fornication and adultery punished?

Adultery and incest carried the death penalty, whereas fornication led to three months in prison. For adultery, a conviction or confession meant death as in a felony, without benefit of clergy, so the usual escape of reading a verse from the Bible was closed ^[1]. For fornication, both parties were committed to the common gaol without bail for three months and stayed there until each gave security before a justice of the peace for good behaviour for one year ^[1].

Brothel keeping was dealt with more severely than fornication. A common bawd, whether man or woman, or a person who knowingly kept a common brothel, faced public whipping, the pillory and branding on the forehead with the letter B, followed by three years in a house of correction at hard labour ^[1]. A second conviction was a capital felony ^[1]. It was the only offence in the Act where repeating the crime led directly to the gallows.

Blackstone's later account of the Act compresses this. He writes that incest and adultery were made capital and that 'the repeated act of keeping a brothel, or committing fornication' became a felony ^[2]. The text of the Act, as printed in the Interregnum collection, contains no repeat-fornication clause, only the second-offence rule for bawdry ^[1]. His phrase is best read as a loose summary rather than an exact account, and this site's article on what Blackstone says about fornication takes the same view.

Several safeguards limited the Act's reach. A conviction did not cause corruption of blood, loss of dower or forfeiture of goods, so families did not lose property because of it ^[1]. Penalties applied only if the accused was indicted within twelve months of the offence. Accused persons could call witnesses to clear themselves, a confession counted only against the person who made it, and spouses could not be witnesses against each other ^[1].

Who was exempt from the death penalty?

The Act's adultery clauses exempted a man who did not know that the woman was married, and a woman whose husband had been away for a long period. The man was not covered if he had no knowledge of her marriage ^[1]. A woman was also exempt if her husband had been continually overseas for three years or was commonly reported dead, or if he had been absent for three years together with no knowledge that he was alive ^[1].

Rape was also outside the adultery provisions. The text excepts cases of rape, so a woman who had been forced was not guilty of adultery ^[1]. These exceptions show that the framers expected real marriages to be broken by long absence, as often happened in a country just out of civil war.

Another practical limit came from the evidence. Because spouses could not testify against each other and a confession bound only the person who made it, a prosecution had to find independent witnesses of an act that was nearly always private ^[1]. The twelve-month deadline for indictment narrowed the window further ^[1].

The Act had no exemption for rank or for clergy. Death 'without benefit of clergy' meant that a convicted adulterer could not claim the medieval privilege that had once spared literate offenders ^[1]. The statute was therefore harsh on paper, although its design also contained the usual protections of a felony trial, including trial by a jury of twelve or more ^[1].

Was the Act actually enforced?

The Act was apparently very little enforced, and the available evidence suggests that courts hesitated to impose the death penalty. Wikipedia's account says courts were reluctant to apply capital punishment for adultery ^[3]. A study of indictments from Interregnum Middlesex, summarised in the abstract of a 2016 Emory University honours thesis, reports few or no convictions under the Act and calls it largely a 'dead letter', arguing that contemporaries found it too cruel to enforce ^[4].

The same study notes a gap between strong backing from the central government and failure at parish level ^[4]. The Rump Parliament was the body of members left after Pride's Purge in December 1648, when the New Model Army expelled MPs who wanted a settlement with Charles I; England was declared a republic on 19 May 1649 ^[5]. The 1650 Act was one of the morality laws passed by the Rump, whose reforming plans met resistance in other areas as well ^[5].

No national figure for prosecutions or executions under the Act has been found in the sources consulted. The Middlesex study covers one semi-rural county outside London and cannot stand for the whole country ^[4]. Readers should therefore treat statements about 'many executions' or 'no executions' anywhere in England with caution, and the safe summary is that the record shows reluctance rather than a campaign of hangings.

Scotland followed its own path. A Scottish statute of 15 December 1567, restated in a royal letter of 1594-95, punished fornication with fines, imprisonment, display at the market cross and, on a third offence, ducking and banishment ^[8]. A Perth kirk session record reproduced in a palaeography course says that Helen Watson and David Gray, both married, were handed to the bailies and hanged for adultery in January 1585, during a plague and famine; the record calls this the only execution of adulterers in that burgh ^[9]. The Scottish story belongs to the kirk-session system described in the article on kirk session discipline in Scotland.

Why was it not renewed after 1660?

The Act ended with the Restoration because the restored monarchy did not recognise the laws of the Commonwealth. The Convention Parliament, which sat from 25 April to 29 December 1660 and proclaimed Charles II the lawful monarch since January 1649, treated the Interregnum acts as removed from the legal record, although it re-enacted a few it wished to keep, such as the Navigation Act ^[6]. The adultery measure was not among them.

Wikipedia's account of adultery in English law says that the Restoration repealed the Act along with all other Commonwealth legislation ^[7]. A caution is needed: the exact statute or resolution that removed this particular Act has not been identified in the sources consulted, and the position is described in general terms in the sources. What is clear is that no later Parliament revived a capital penalty for adultery.

Blackstone offers the contemporary explanation. After the Restoration, he says, it was not thought proper to renew a law of such severity ^[2]. The offences went back to the church courts, whose 'feeble coercion' he describes in the same passage ^[2].

The result was a return to the older division of labour. Church courts handled adultery from the medieval period until the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, with penances that included standing before the parish congregation in a white sheet ^[7]. The earlier article on the 'bawdy courts' describes how that system worked.

How did Blackstone later judge it?

Blackstone presented the 1650 Act as a display of strictness by the regime of its day, and he said that it was not thought proper to renew so rigorous a law after 1660. He writes that the ruling powers of 1650 adopted the semblance of an extraordinary strictness and purity of morals ^[2].

He then places the offences in the framework of his own day. Temporal courts, he says, took no notice of adultery as a crime but treated it as a private injury, and incontinence was left to the spiritual court ^[2]. The distinction between offences against society and sins best left to church discipline was a lasting feature of English law.

Scholars have asked how typical the 1650 Act was. A 1986 article in the Hastings Law Journal by Jeremy Weinstein, as summarised on Wikipedia, says that it is the only time since the twelfth century that adultery was outlawed in secular statute law in England ^[3]. That claim was not checked against the article itself and should be treated as one scholar's framing.

For readers asking whether any of this applies today, the answer is no. Fornication is not a crime anywhere in the United Kingdom, and the companion law article on whether fornication is illegal in the UK sets out the modern position.

Frequently asked questions

Was anyone executed under the 1650 Act?

No execution under the Act has been confirmed in the sources consulted. A study of Middlesex indictments found few or no convictions, and Wikipedia says courts were reluctant to impose death for adultery ^[3][4]. A complete national count has not been found, so the question remains open.

Did the 1650 Act apply to men and women equally?

Partly. Adultery was defined by the woman's marriage, so only a married woman and her partner were guilty, whereas a married man who had sex with an unmarried woman was guilty of fornication ^[1][3]. Both sexes faced the same penalties for each offence, and bawdry covered men and women alike ^[1].

What was the Rump Parliament?

The Rump Parliament was the remnant of the Long Parliament after Pride's Purge in December 1648. About eighty MPs stayed immediately afterwards, and around 200 sat in total between the purge and Cromwell's dissolution in April 1653, with only sixty or seventy attending regularly ^[5]. It passed the 1650 Act.

Did Scotland have similar laws?

Yes, in a different form. A Scottish act of 15 December 1567 punished fornication with fines, imprisonment and public humiliation, and kirk sessions disciplined offenders ^[8]. Scottish adultery could also end in execution, as a Perth record of 1585 shows, although that record calls it the only such case in the burgh ^[9].

How long did the Act last?

It applied from 24 June 1650 and did not survive the Restoration of 1660, so it was in force for roughly ten years at most ^[1][7]. In practice it was little used. The Convention Parliament of 1660 removed Commonwealth acts from the legal record ^[6].

Where can the text of the 1650 Act be read?

The text is printed in the volume of Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum published on British History Online, on the pages covering the Act of 10 May 1650 ^[1]. Blackstone's summary of it is available in his Commentaries, Book IV, chapter 4 ^[2]. The text uses seventeenth-century spelling.