Manchester University Press
3 Thomas Potts’s ‘dusty memory’
Abstract
This chapter demonstrates that “The Wonderfull Discoverie” by Thomas Potts is the clearest example of an account published to display the shining efficiency and justice of the legal system. The literary genre of witchcraft stories and their relationship with the trials of 1612 is analyzed. By comparing Potts's account with what is known of Jacobean judicial procedures, it is shown that Potts arranged the evidence in a kind of ‘mock trial’, designed to convey the impression of a transparent courtroom reconstruction at the same time as subtly manipulating the evidence. His exceptional craft appears still more clearly from the systematic reading of all the surviving accounts of witchcraft from the period. Potts's text turns out to be an unusually late and detailed example of a genre, which had been disused in England for some twenty years: the evidence-based account of witchcraft. The analysis of Potts text suggests that witchcraft itself was seen as not a fact but an impossible crime, which had itself to be constructed in the minds of all those concerned, victims and accusers alike. The construction of Potts's account provides an understanding of the construction of the trial, of the evidence, and of the crime itself.
Abstract
This chapter demonstrates that “The Wonderfull Discoverie” by Thomas Potts is the clearest example of an account published to display the shining efficiency and justice of the legal system. The literary genre of witchcraft stories and their relationship with the trials of 1612 is analyzed. By comparing Potts's account with what is known of Jacobean judicial procedures, it is shown that Potts arranged the evidence in a kind of ‘mock trial’, designed to convey the impression of a transparent courtroom reconstruction at the same time as subtly manipulating the evidence. His exceptional craft appears still more clearly from the systematic reading of all the surviving accounts of witchcraft from the period. Potts's text turns out to be an unusually late and detailed example of a genre, which had been disused in England for some twenty years: the evidence-based account of witchcraft. The analysis of Potts text suggests that witchcraft itself was seen as not a fact but an impossible crime, which had itself to be constructed in the minds of all those concerned, victims and accusers alike. The construction of Potts's account provides an understanding of the construction of the trial, of the evidence, and of the crime itself.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- Notes on contributors vii
- Preface x
- Acknowledgements xiii
- 1 Introduction 1
- Part I: The Trials of 1612 19
- 2 Potts, plots and politics 22
- 3 Thomas Potts’s ‘dusty memory’ 42
- 4 ‘Those to whom evil is done’ 58
- Part II: Contexts 71
- 5 Witchcraft, economy and society in the forest of Pendle 73
- 6 The Reformation in the parish of Whalley 88
- 7 Beyond Pendle 105
- Part III: Rewriting the Lancashire Witches 123
- 8 The pilot’s thumb 126
- 9 Sexual and spiritual politics in the events of 1633–34 and The Late Lancashire Witches 146
- 10 The ‘Lancashire novelist’ and the Lancashire witches 166
- 11 Wicca, Paganism and history 188
- Bibliography 204
- Index 219
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- Notes on contributors vii
- Preface x
- Acknowledgements xiii
- 1 Introduction 1
- Part I: The Trials of 1612 19
- 2 Potts, plots and politics 22
- 3 Thomas Potts’s ‘dusty memory’ 42
- 4 ‘Those to whom evil is done’ 58
- Part II: Contexts 71
- 5 Witchcraft, economy and society in the forest of Pendle 73
- 6 The Reformation in the parish of Whalley 88
- 7 Beyond Pendle 105
- Part III: Rewriting the Lancashire Witches 123
- 8 The pilot’s thumb 126
- 9 Sexual and spiritual politics in the events of 1633–34 and The Late Lancashire Witches 146
- 10 The ‘Lancashire novelist’ and the Lancashire witches 166
- 11 Wicca, Paganism and history 188
- Bibliography 204
- Index 219
