Approaches to the Problem of “Monstrous Youth” in the Popular Print Culture of Seventeenth-Century England

This paper investigates the various ways in which youth crime was addressed in the popular print culture of seventeenth-century England. It considers the way in which, in England at least, over the centuries people have tended to regard the youth of their own time with despair at their lack of morals and bad behavior while looking back fondly at the youth of bygone days as being paragons of virtue. This is, of course, a myth and has been previously traced back to the early eighteenth century as such by previous scholars. In this study, I extend that work to the seventeenth-century by examining a small sample of documents including a sermon, a confession before execution, and a broadside ballad. I conclude that what has been observed about attitudes to youth and crime in the later centuries did indeed pertain to the seventeenth century as well, albeit with some slight differences such as the greater emphasis on ungodliness and sin.