Truth, Evidence and the Law in the Early Modern Witchcraft Trials

Week 7

Tutor: Naomi Pullin

This seminar explores the operation of truth and evidence in British legal proceedings. Whilst today we accept that the successful prosecution of suspected criminals centres on establishing the truth beyond reasonable doubt, cases tried in early modern courts were shaped by the perceived credibility, trustworthiness and reputation of the person on trial rather than facts and evidence. This seminar explores the basis on which guilt and culpability were determined in early modern legal trials by focusing on the 'imagined crime' of witchcraft. We will question how far the demand for stricter rules regarding the use of torture and conclusive evidence regarding maleficium and demonic pacts resulted in the decline of witchcraft in this period.

Required preparation

• Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (1990), Introduction (pp. 1-7)

• Malcolm Gaskill, “Witchcraft and Evidence in Early Modern England,” Past & Present, no. 198, 2008, pp. 33–70.

• Read John Dunton, The Athenian Mercury, Vol. 9, Iss. 23, (Feb. 28 1693), 313-4.
• Choose a case from chapters 2-9 of Philip Almond, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern England: Contemporary Texts and their Cultural Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Be prepared to discuss your case with the rest of the group. Think about:
  • The construction and authorship of the narrative
  • The purpose of the narrative
  • When the event occurred and who was involved
  • How truth, evidence and guilt were established in the case
  • The outcome/verdict

Seminar questions

• How can a focus on truth shape how historians understand and interpret early modern legal records?
• On what basis was guilt established in early modern witchcraft trials?
• How far did judicial objections to witchcraft and the use of torture lead to a decline in witchcraft accusations?
• In what ways did honesty and trust shape early modern legal trials?
• How central were oaths to establishing credibility in early modern law courts?
• Why was perjury a communal concern in early modern Britain?

Key texts

• Paul Cavill, 'Perjury in Early Tudor England', Studies in Church History (2020), 182-209.

• Malcolm Gaskill, “Witchcraft and Evidence in Early Modern England,” Past & Present, no. 198, 2008, pp. 33–70.

• Malcolm Gaskill, 'Reporting Murder: Fiction in the Archives in Early Modern England', Social History 23 (1) (1998), pp. 1-30.

• Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (1990).

• Zoë Jackson, 'Truth and Trust: Remembering Perjury in the Early Modern Community', Many Headed Monster (2024).

• Laura Kounine, "Not a drop of tears, or any sweat from fear came from her": interrogating mind, body, and emotions in early modern German witch-trials', Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 54(1) (2024), 113-135.

• Brian P. Levack, 'Witchcraft and the Law' in Brian P. Levack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America (2013).

• Brian P. Levack, 'The End of the Witch Trials', in Darren Oldridge (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader (2002), 373-386.
• Peter Rushton, ‘Texts of Authority: Witchcraft Accusations and the Demonstration of Truth in Early Modern England’, in Stuart Clark (ed.), Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture (2000), 21-40. See also chapter by Gaskill.
• Barbara J. Shapiro, ‘Oaths, Credibility and the Legal Process in Early Modern England: Part Two’. Law and Humanities 7, no. 1 (2013): 19–54.

Primary sources

• Database: The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 [fully searchable database of the trials and Ordinary's Accounts held at the Old Bailey].
• Database: The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, 1563-1736, a searchable database of all people known to have been accused of witchcraft in early modern Scotland.
• John Cotta, The Triall of Witch-Craft: Shewing the True and Right Methode of the Discovery, with a Confutation of Erroneous Wayes (London, 1616, STC 5836)
• Philip Almond, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern England: Contemporary Texts and their Cultural Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), chs. 2-9.
• John Dunton, The Athenian Mercury, Vol. 9, Iss. 23 (Feb. 28 1693), 313-4.
• John Gaule, Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts (London, 1646), 79, 93.
• Brian P. Levack, The Witchcraft Sourcebook (2nd edn, 2015).
• William Perkins, A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft: So Farre Forth as It Is Revealed in the Scriptures and Manifest by True Experience (London, 1608, STC 19697), 200–4, 219–46.
• (2004), 107. 45 Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584, STC 21864)

Further reading

• Sara Beam, 'Violence and Justice in Europe: Punishment, Torture and Execution', in Robert Anthony, Stuart Carroll and Caroline Dodds Pennock, Cambridge World History of Violence, Vol. III, 1500-1800 (2020), 389-407.
• Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), esp. chapters on 'Magistrates and Witches', 'Inviolability', 'The Charisma of Office'.
• Owen Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture 1736-1951 (2025), esp. chapters 1-2.
• Gregory Durston, Witchcraft and Witch Trials: A History of English Witchcraft and its Legal Perspectives, 1542 to 1736 (Chichester, 2000)
• Malcolm Gaskill, 'The Pursuit of Reality: Recent Research into the History of Witchcraft', Historical Journal 51(4) (2008), 1069-1088.
• Malcolm Gaskill, 'Witchcraft Trials in England', in Brian P. Levack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America (2013).
• Douglas Hay, ‘Prosecution and Power: Malicious Prosecution in the English Courts, 1750–1850’, in Douglas Hay and Francis Snyder (eds.), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 1750–1850 (Oxford, 1989)
• Cynthia B. Herrup, ‘Law and Morality in Seventeenth-Century England’, Past and Present, no. 106 (Feb. 1985)
• Clive Holmes, ‘Popular Culture? Witches, Magistrates and Divines in Early Modern England’, in Steven L. Kaplan (ed.), Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Berlin, 1984).
• Clive Holmes, 'Women: Witches and Witnesses', in Darren Oldridge (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader (2002), 303-322.
• D M Jones, Conscience and Allegiance in C17th England: The Significance of Oaths and Engagements(1999).
• Mark Knights, The Devil in Disguise: Deception, Delusion and Fanaticism in the Early English Enlightenment (2011).
• Laura Kounine, Imagining the Witch: Emotions, Gender and Selfhood in Early Modern Germany (2018).
• Laura Kounine, 'Emotions, Mind, and Body on Trial: A Cross-Cultural Perspective', Journal of Social History 51(3) (2019), 1527-1897.
• John H. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Regime (1977).
• Christina Larner, ‘Crimen Exceptum? The Crime of Witchcraft in Europe’, in V. A. C. Gatrell, Bruce Lenman and Geoffrey Parker (eds.), Crime and the Law: The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500 (London, 1980).
• James Oldham, 'Truth-Telling in the Eighteenth-Century English Courtroom', Law and History Review, 12:1 (1994), 95-121.
• Diane Purkiss, 'Testimony and Truth:The Witch of EdmontonandThe Witches of Lancashire in The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations(2010), 231-249.
• Richard Raiswell, ‘Faking It: A Case of Counterfeit Possession in the Reign of James I’, Renaissance and Reformation, xxiii (1999.
• J. A. Sharpe, ‘Women, Witchcraft and the Legal Process’, in Darren Oldridge (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader (2002), 289-302.
• C. R. Unsworth, ‘Witchcraft Beliefs and Criminal Procedure in Early Modern England’, in Thomas G. Watkin (ed.), Legal Record and Historical Reality: Proceedings of the Eighth British Legal History Conference, Cardiff, 1987 (London, 1989).
• Rachel Weil, A Plague of Informers: Conspiracy and Political Trust in William III's England (2014).
• James Q. Whitman, The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial (2016).