Henry Goodcole, Visitor of Newgate: Crime, Conversion, and Patronage

The Witch Figure:The Witch of Edmonton

“…Sawyer's plain descriptions of her relationship with Tom authenticate and perhaps aesthetically heighten their sensational impact for readers while discounting the impression that Goodcole is exploiting the story for personal gain. ' 45 Despite its Calvinist claims to spiritual redemption, the Goodcole account was highly influential in the dramatisation of the Sawyer story. For the most part, both significant and trivial details of the pamphlet correlate with William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford's The Witch of Edmonton.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2005

“…Bowd explains how John Dee, magician (and principal of Manchester College), initiated Christopher Saxton’s survey of Manchester in 1596 to record the town’s antiquities, and perhaps to revive his college’s finances. Martin explores the career of Henry Goodcole, chaplain of Ludgate and Newgate prisons in London, who exploited his position to become a successful ‘true‐crime’ writer, and the father of a new genre of urban literature. Archer shows that sixteenth‐century Londoners had a powerful sense of their history, and a good understanding of some of its sources.…”