The issue of migration among the rural population living on the lands of the Czech Crown in the early modern age continues to attract only marginal attention in Czech historiography. Therefore, those people who lived on the very edge of that society remain outside the scope of research interest. The Romany Gypsies who were bom without homes, lie also outside the traditional focus of attention. In the early modern age, anyone could kill a Romany Gypsy without punishment; people were meant to despise them and were even supposed to persecute them. The Romany Gypsies were therefore forced to develop a specific strategy of action, which was intended to help them survive, and a significant role in this strategy was played by migration. A condition for survival was not only the need to maintain a strong internal structure within the Romany Gypsy group, but also the need to create ties with a settled society. These ties ensured, in the case of a threat, at least some form of a rudimentary protective social network. Such ties were probably passed down from generation to generation and the Romany Gypsies therefore, as much as was possible, restricted their movements to only well-known areas. On their travels through the landscape they tried to obtain food not only through begging and theft, but also by telling fortunes and reading palms, skilfully taking advantage of the fact that in the eyes of the settled population their lives were cloaked in mystery. However, they never forgot to emphasise their ties to the land in which they were bom and the impossibility of leaving it for another land. A question remains for further research as to whether they were persecuted for their ethnic origin or whether it was because of their nomadic lifestyle, which enabled them to evade the mechanisms of social control.
The study draws on research on interrogation records connected with vice crime in the Jindřichův Hradec estate in the years 1670-1710. In 142 cases handled, criminal fornication was by far the most prevalent crime (114 cases, 80.3%), and, as a result of subsequent extra-marital pregnancy, it was the easiest offence to prove. However, the women offenders, who were usually between 20 and 30 years of age (66.9%), did not have to worry just about punishment from the authorities, as a woman was above all at risk of losing her honour. Therefore, in those days women used various defensive strategies that were intended to ensure them the least possible damage to their honour and could even help them to restore it. Most often a woman defended herself with the claim that prior to sexual intercourse her partner had offered her marriage. If that claim proved true, the woman’s behaviour was regarded to some degree as legitimate. Another possible defensive strategy was to accuse the man of rape or throw blame on someone else. Both men and women tended to cite their alleged drunkenness as a mitigating circumstance. The riskiest strategy was when women chose to conceal their pregnancy. The discovery of a dead child led to accusations of infanticide and potentially also a trip to the gallows. However, many women and men accused of criminal fornication never served their sentences. To what extent this was owing to the various supportive documents from relatives and friends, interceding on their behalf, is a question for future research.