Critical Reasoning

Court records from medieval France show that in the years 1300 to 1400 the number of people arrested in the French realm for "violent interpersonal crimes" (not committed in wars) increased by 30 percent over the number of people arrested for such crimes in the years 1200 to 1300. The increase was not the result of false arrests; therefore, medieval France had a higher level of documented interpersonal violence in the years 1300 to 1400 than in the years 1200 to 1300.


Which one of the following statements, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

(A) In the years 1300 to 1400 the French government's category of violent crimes

included an increasing variety of interpersonal crimes that are actually nonviolent.

(B) Historical accounts by monastic chroniclers in the years 1300 to 1400 are filled with descriptions of violent attacks committed by people living in the French realm

(C) The number of individual agreements between two people in which they swore oaths not to attack each other increased substantially after 1300.

(D) When English armies tried to conquer parts of France in the mid- to late 1300s. violence in the northern province of Normandy and the south-western province of Gascony increased.

(E) The population of medical France increased substantially during the first five decades of the 1300s until the deadly bubonic plague decimated the population of France after 1348.