How were children punished in Elizabethan England?

Answer 1

Punishments in medieval schools consisted almost exclusively of birching (flogging with a birch 'rod', i.e. a heavy bundle of birch twigs) applied to thenaked buttocks. Pupils would have to kneel and bend over a 'flogging block' to receive the punishment. Floggings were severe and cruel, consisting of up to 50 strokes of the birch, leaving the whole of the victim's buttocks and upper thighs(including the anoperineal sphere) a mass of raw, bloody and lacerated flesh.

Answer 2

In the early 12th century the Churchman Guibert de Nogent wrote about his childhood and education for a vocation as a clergyman. His experience was typical of all children receiving formal education throughout the medieval period:

"Once I was beaten in school. Of those pupils the teacher had accepted, I alone had previously been free from discipline - my careful mother had exacted this from the teacher by increasing the fee and conferring the honour of her patronage. Therefore at one evening hour, the class having been dismissed, I came to my mother's knee soberly having been beaten harder than I deserved, she began to ask as usual whether I had been whipped that day. I denied the fact, but she lifted up my shirt and found the ribs bruised by the blows of the rod and the skin covered with welts."

Beating children was considered the correct form of punishment for a wide range of misdemeanours; in the monasteries beatings continued to be used on adult monks for minor infractions. The instrument used was either one thick wooden rod or a bundle of thinner rods.

Answer 3

Well, The fact is that children during the middle ages were treated as miniature adults, this is most evident in the paintings of children from that time. They were not at all considered sweet and innocent as small children, if a child committed a crime or offended someone, they suffered the same punishment as their parents and other adults.

Answer 4

They were usually whipped, hit on the head, slapped, beat with a rod or a stick, or spanked. They would be punished for bad manners usually or if they disobeyed their parents orders.