Chapter V: Popular Culture? Witches, Magistrates, and Divines in Early Modern England

Holmes, Clive

doi:10.1515/9783110854305.85

Cited by 15 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Two pamphlets from 1612 and 1613 contain early documentation of swimming witchcraft suspects in early modern England . The test was in wider use at the time of Hopkins's East‐Anglia witch hunt, led by Matthew Hopkins in the mid‐1640s (Holmes , 104). Some of the performers of this illegal practice were brought to trial for assault and murder (when the swimming ended in drowning).…”

Section: The Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Experiments in the Courtroom: Social Dynamics and Spectacles of Proof in Early Modern English Witch Trials

Darr¹

2014

Law soc. inq.

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This article presents the composite social context surrounding the “experiments” that were used to prove witchcraft accusations in early modern England. It demonstrates that legal proof was not imposed by elite legislators and judges, or fashioned in accordance with the voice of scientific experts, but was shaped through complex social dynamics in which the middling sort and petty gentry fulfilled a crucial role. Through this process, popular beliefs percolated into judicial proceedings. Members of influential provincial families were the social agents who reconstructed old supernatural methods of proof into innovative rational experiments, often replicating public displays of proof that helped bolster the criminal charges and provided a competing arena of evidence. The article claims that the judges' cooperation with these “experiments” might have been an endeavor by the official legal system to circumvent the threat posed by a popular grassroots alternative to the exclusive jurisdiction of the court system.

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Section: The Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Historians offered several explanations for the reappearance of the swimming, but none is entirely satisfactory. The functional account of tension relief does not explain why tensions were relieved in this particular manner (Holmes , 105). Some suggested possible Continental influence (Kittredge , 235; Sharpe , 218; Pihlajamaki , 46).…”

Section: The Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experiments in the Courtroom: Social Dynamics and Spectacles of Proof in Early Modern English Witch Trials

Darr¹

2014

Law soc. inq.

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“…It has also been pointed out that Thomas had un dervalued the coherence of popular beliefs and prac tices and overstressed their ad hoc functionalism; and that, though the distinction between elite and popu lar beliefs is important, in practice there was more mutual influence and interpenetration than he had implied, and also considerable differentiation within each social level (Geertz 1975;Holmes 1984). Clive Holmes has stressed that popular opinion manifested itself both in accusations and in verdicts.…”

Section: Jacqueline Simpsonmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The possessed were subject to sodal pressures from their families and clergy, and framed their accusations accordingly; the women who con-Witches and Witchbusters 9 ducted physical examinations of suspects were ex pected to confirm elite assumptions, but often failed to do so. Men, he argues, were the prime movers in pros ecutions, women the ancillaries; the issue of gender, Holmes concludes, cannot be eliminated (Holmes 1993).…”

Section: Debates and Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Witches and Witchbusters

Simpson

1996

Folklore

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Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England

Walker

2003

199

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An extended study of gender and crime in early modern England. It considers the ways in which criminal behaviour and perceptions of criminality were informed by ideas about gender and order, and explores their practical consequences for the men and women who were brought before the criminal courts. Dr Walker's innovative approach demonstrates that, contrary to received opinion, the law was often structured so as to make the treatment of women and men before the courts incommensurable. For the first time, early modern criminality is explored in terms of masculinity as well as femininity. Illuminating the interactions between gender and other categories such as class and civil war have implications not merely for the historiography of crime but for the social history of early modern England as a whole. This study therefore goes beyond conventional studies, and challenges hitherto accepted views of social interaction in the period.

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Chapter V: Popular Culture? Witches, Magistrates, and Divines in Early Modern England

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Experiments in the Courtroom: Social Dynamics and Spectacles of Proof in Early Modern English Witch Trials

Experiments in the Courtroom: Social Dynamics and Spectacles of Proof in Early Modern English Witch Trials

Witches and Witchbusters

Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England

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