Witchcraft and Evidence in Early Modern England

Women, Legal Records, and the Problem of the Lawyer's Hand

“…68 A growing suspicion of hearsay, and the development of evidentiary rules against its admissibility, dramatically curtailed successful prosecutions of witchcraft. 69 In these ways, whole populations became schooled in legal logic and standards of proof, and the same was true, to a more limited extent, of rhetoric. Lynn Bennett has shown how female poets understood and employed the tropes and figures of classical rhetoric, picked up through their own reading of other authors or taken directly from guidebooks such as George Puttenham's The Art of English Poesy.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2008

“…In fact, she argues, this is indicative of the English Reformation more broadly, which actually involved the subtle transposing of supernatural beliefs in line with Protestantism rather than their destruction as Popish relics. Gaskill places the East Anglian witch craze of the 1640s in its legal historical context. The growing emphasis in early Stuart England on the diabolic pact, which was harder to prove in the courtroom, called for greater inquisitorial ‘creativity’, notably—once the structures of civil order broke down during the war—Hopkins and Stearne's use of torture.…”