This social history of suicide in early modern England traces the rise and fall of the crime of self-murder and explores the reasons why suicide came to be harshly punished in the 16th century, yet was tolerated and even sentimentalized in the century following the English Revolution. The authors employ a wide range of records from the period between 1500 and 1800 in order to explain the profound changes in attitudes to suicide and responses to actual deaths. Their detailed examination of the changing meaning of self-destruction provides an illuminating perspective of the sweep of cultural and social change in England over three centuries.