¹ This debate can be found in Stone, Lawrence, “Interpersonal Violence in English Society, 1300–1980,” Past and Present, no. 101 (1983), pp. 22–33Google Scholar; Sharpe, J. A., “The History of Violence in England: Some Observations,” Past and Present, no. 108 (1985), pp. 206–15Google Scholar; Stone, Lawrence, “A Rejoinder,” Past and Present, no. 108 (1985), pp. 216–24Google Scholar; Cockburn, J. S., “Patterns of Violence in English Society: Homicide in Kent, 1560–1985,” Past and Present, no. 130 (1991), pp. 70–106Google Scholar; as Stone's original piece responded to Alan Macfarlane with Harrison, Sara, The Justice and the Mares Ale: Law and Disorder in Seventeenth Century England (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, the debate can be said to be a commentary on this work.

² Cockburn, p. 105.

³ Sharpe, , “History of Violence,” p. 214Google Scholar.

⁴ Weber, Max, Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society, ed. Rheinstein, Max, trans. Shils, Edward, Twentieth Century Legal Philosophy Series, vol. 6 (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), p. 14Google Scholar.

⁵ See esp. the essays in Campbell, Anne and Gibbs, John J., eds., Violent Transactions: The Limits of Personality (Oxford and New York, 1986)Google Scholar; and Riches, David, ed., The Anthropology of Violence (Oxford and New York, 1986)Google Scholar.

⁶ Dalton, Michael, The Countrey Justice, Containing the Practise of the Justices of the Peace out of their Sessions (London, 1619; facsimile reprint, London, 1973), p. 364Google Scholar.

⁷ Public Record Office (P.R.O.) STAC 8 249/19, Complaint of Nicholas Rosyer against James Quarry et al.

⁸ Oxfordshire Archives (hereafter Oxf. Arch.), Ms. Oxf. Dioc. Papers c. 26, Offic dmni con Robert Aston et al., fol. 340v–341v, 346v–347; Bod. Lib. Ms. Don c. 37, no. 1000, fol. 83v (September 1, 1668); Dorset Record Office (R.O.), Dorset Q/S Order Book, Epiphany Sessions, 1631/2, fol. 355v; Oxford City Records, 0.5.9., Quarter Sessions Order Book, Mich. Session 1616, p. 41.

⁹ Quoted by Emmison, F. G., Elizabethan Life: Disorder (Chelmsford, 1970), p. 167Google Scholar; Staffordshire Quarter Sessions Rolls, Easter 1608–Trinity 1609, ed. Salt, D. H. G., in Collections for a History of Staffordshire (Kendal, 1950), p. 169Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Wiltenburg, Joy, Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England and Germany (Charlottesville, Va., 1992), p. 183Google Scholar.

¹¹ Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979), pt. 1 passim and p. 80Google Scholar; I could write at far greater length about Foucault, but it would take me away from my central argument. In general, I find that Foucault's emphasis on state power over the body in the ancien regime misses the attempts of early modern society to discipline the soul; what is different about the disciplinary structures of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is not so much the use of “a mechanism that coerces by means of observation” (p. 170): such a mechanism is in place in early modern villages. What is new is the way that mechanism and observation were organized. For observation and discipline in early modern villages, see, e.g., Amussen, Susan D., “Feminin/Masculin: Le genre dans l'Angleterre de l'epoque moderne,” Annales: Economies, societies, civilisations 40, no. 2 (1985): 269–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² For a fuller discussion of this theory, see Amussen, Susan Dwyer, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford and New York, 1988), chap. 2Google Scholar.

¹³ Herrup, Cynthia B., The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge and New York, 1987), pp. 145, 157–58, 161–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beattie, J. M., Crime and the Courts in England, 1660–1800 (Princeton, N.J., 1986), e.g., pp. 80–96, 410–11, 420–29Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Amussen, , An Ordered Society, pp. 40–43Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Beattie, pp. 88–89, 141–46, 451–56, and passim.

¹⁶ These are identified by those which were included in Howell, T. B., ed., Cobbett's Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdeameanors from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, 33 vols. (London, 1809–1826)Google Scholar (hereafter Cobbett's State Trials). This collection is reasonably complete and accessible and sufficiently eclectic in its choices of trials; though one could wish for a better annotated collection. Volume 1 runs from 1143 to 1600; volume 12 reaches only into the reign of William and Mary.

¹⁷ Ibid., vol. 2: the account of the trial is on pp. 155–94, of torture, on p. 202, and of executions, on pp. 215–18; for the use of torture, see Langbein, John, Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Regime (Chicago and London, 1979), pp. 75–82, 118–23, 130Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Cobbett's State Trials, 2:184Google Scholar; cf. Foucault, pp. 49–50.

¹⁹ Gardiner, Samuel Rawson, ed., Documents Relating to the Proceedings against William Prynne, in 1634 and 1637, with a Biographical Fragment by the Late John Bruce, Camden Society, n.s., vol. 18 (London, 1877)Google Scholar (hereafter Proceedings against William Prynne), pp. 1–31, esp. 2–3, 5, 8, 10 for the offense, and the discussion of punishment, pp. 17–28; see also Cobbett's State Trials, 3:561–86Google Scholar; and Rushworth, John, Historical Collections. The Second Part, Containing the Principal Matters Which happened from the Dissolution of the Parliament, on the 10th of March, 4 Car. I. 1628/9 Until the Summoning of another Parliament, which met at Westminster, April 13, 1640 … Impartially Related and Disposed in Annals, Setting forth only Matter of Fact in Order of Time, Without Observation or Reflection (London, 1680), pp. 220–41, 247–49Google Scholar.

²⁰ Proceedings against William Prynne, pp. 19–20, 25; Cobbett's State Trials, 3:584–86Google Scholar. The question of why he—and other later offenders—was prosecuted in Star Chamber is not altogether clear. Although scandalum magnatum was punishable in common-law courts by statutes of 1&2 Philip and Mary c. 3 and 1 Eliz. c. 6 (which also established the loss of ears as the penalty for spreading seditious news and loss of the right hand for writing it), the practice even under Elizabeth seems to have been to prosecute such cases in Star Chamber when they pertained to the royal government, and Star Chamber does not appear to have acknowledged any statutory basis for their actions; the exception to this is the trial of the puritan John Udall at the Surrey Assizes in July 1590 for seditious libel against the queen; Star Chamber was always, of course, easier to control than a jury, and in cases relating to the crown, it was always better not to depend on ajury: Cobbett's State Trials, 1:1271–1316Google Scholar; Plucknett, Theodore F. T., A Concise History of the Common Law, 5th ed. (Boston, 1956), pp. 486–87Google Scholar; Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley, Calif., and Los Angeles, 1967), p. 407Google Scholar.

²¹ Cope, Ester, Politics without Parliaments, 1629–1640 (London, 1987), pp. 71, 73–74, and 91Google Scholar n. 212 for a list of the publications involved; for the complaint, see Calendar of State Papers, Domestic (CSPD), Charles I, vol. 11 (1637), p. 44Google Scholar (P.R.O. SP 16/354/181).

²² Rushworth, 2:380–82; Cobbett's State Trials, 3:711–55Google Scholar; it was reported that the “hangman hewed off Prynne's ears very scurvily, which put him to much pain” because on the previous occasion Prynne had given the hangman a smaller tip than he had promised; see Proceedings against William Prynne, p. 87. It is interesting to compare the punishments to those imposed on the people who sheltered the press in the Martin Marprelate case, also in Star Chamber: though Collinson describes the punishment as “crushing” (p. 418) the fines were lighter than those of Burton, Bastwick, and Prynne, and there was no ritual shaming or mutilation, though those convicted were imprisoned during the queen's pleasure; see McGrath, Patrick, Papists and Puritans under Elizabeth I (London, 1967), pp. 248–49Google Scholar; the trials in King's Bench of Sir John Elliot, Denzil Hollis, and Benjamin Valentine after their disruption of the dissolution of Parliament in 1629 also led to much lighter fines than those imposed on Burton, Bastwick, and Prynne; see Cobbett's State Trials, 3:293–310Google Scholar; Cope, pp. 15–16.

²³ Cobbett's State Trials, 3:1315–21Google Scholar; Lilburne also refused to take the ex officio oath, which required those taking it to swear to answer all questions that were asked; it was anathema to the common lawyers (among others) because the questions did not need to be limited to the issues under investigation and could be used for general fishing expeditions by the authorities who were looking for offenders; he also challenged the legality of Star Chamber proceedings. Lilburne's own account of his punishment is found in Cobbett's State Trials, 3:1328–42Google Scholar; Lilburne was prosecuted (and punished) with the elderly John Wharton, though the sources are almost silent about Wharton's fate, in part because Lilburne successfully publicized his own position; because of Wharton's age (eighty-five), he was spared the whipping, but he was certainly still in prison in July 1638 when he petitioned for his wife or servant to be allowed to help him in his “extremity.” He was also as quarrelsome as Lilburne, if the letter to Sir John Lambe in December 1637 arguing against the ex officio oath is properly attributed to him: CSPD, Charles I, vol. 12 (1637–38), pp. 2, 569 (P.R.O. SP 16 373/3, 395/73).

²⁴ For ducking, see Underdown, David E., “The Taming of the Scold: The Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England,” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. Fletcher, Anthony and Stevenson, John (Cambridge and New York, 1985), pp. 116–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for branks, see Boose, Lynda, “Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds: Taming the Woman's Unruly Member,” Shakespeare Quarterly 42, no. 2 (1991): 179–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ Proceedings against William Prynne, p. 87; Cope, pp. 73–74; Gregg, Pauline, Free-born John: A Biography of John Lilburne (London, 1961), pp. 64–67Google Scholar; CSPD, Charles I, vol. 11 (1637), pp. 156–57, 242 (P.R.O. SP 16 357/102, 362/45); D.R.O. D413/22/1, p. 48; when Prynne was punished in 1634, the Dorchester diarist William Whiteway wrote that he “endured his mutilation with much courage”: William Whiteway of Dorchester: His Diary, 1618 to 1635, Dorset Record Society, vol. 12 (1991), p. 144Google Scholar (I am grateful to David Underdown for the Bond and Whiteway references). In 1637 the Godly were reported to pray that “God would deliver his servants [Bastwick, Prynne, and Burton] from persecution”: CSPD, Charles I, vol. 11 (1637), pp. 209, 242 (P.R.O. SP 16 361/67).

²⁶ Rushworth, 2:466–69.

²⁷ Herrup (n. 13 above), esp. chap. 7.

²⁸ The account of the plot and the trial is in Gardiner, Samuel Rawson, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Disgrace of Chief Justice Coke, 1603–16, 2 vols. (London, 1863), 1:81–108 passimGoogle Scholar; or Cobbett's State Trials (n. 16 above), 2:61–70Google Scholar; the letter quoted is on p. 54; the reaction is surprising because Brooke at least was a thoroughly unsavory plotter, who one would not have expected to garner much sympathy; cf. Foucault (n. 11 above), pp. 59–65.

²⁹ Langbein (n. 17 above), pp. 75–76: some accused might elect peine forte et dure because they would not be convicted of a crime, and therefore their property would not be forfeited to the crown. Lupton, Donald, London and the Countrey Carbonadoed and Quartred into severall Characters (London, 1632)Google Scholar, Short Title Catalog (S.T.C.) 16944, suggests that in Newgate there are “many to be pressed to death” (p. 49)—though how accurate this is is unclear. One notable person who was pressed to death was the Catholic Margaret Clitheroe, who refused to plead “that she might not bring others into danger by her conviction, or be accessory to the jurymen's sins in condemning the innocent”; see Challoner, Richard D., Memoirs of Missionary Priests, ed. Pollen, John H. (London, 1924), p. 119Google Scholar.

³⁰ Herrup, esp. pp. 165 ff.; Sharpe, J. A., Crime in Early Modern England, 1550–1750 (London and New York, 1984), pp. 57–59Google Scholar. Foucault, pt. 1 passim, esp. pp. 43–44 for scaffold speeches, and pp. 47 ff. for its political uses, and “‘Last Dying Speeches’: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth Century England,” Past and Present, no. 107 (1985), pp. 144–67Google Scholar.

³¹ Challoner, pp. 421–8, esp. pp. 426–27. I am grateful to David Underdown for this reference.

³² For a fuller discussion of these issues, see Amussen, An Ordered Society (n. 12 above), chap. 2.

³³ Gouge, William, Of Domesticall Duties: Eight Treatises, 3d ed. (London, 1634), p. 17Google Scholar.

³⁴ Amussen, , An Ordered Society, pp. 42–43Google Scholar. Two pamphlets that come to opposite conclusions on this subject are Heale, William, An Apologie for Women (Oxford, 1609), S.T.C. 13014Google Scholar; and Vauts, Mones A., The Husbands Authoritie Unvail'd: wherein it is moderately discussed whether it be fit or lawful for a good man to beat his bad wife (London, 1650)Google Scholar, Thomason Tracts E. 884 (1): even so, the authority given by Vauts to a man to beat his wife is severely limited; for a fuller discussion of the issues of domestic violence, see Amussen, Susan D., “‘Being Stirred to Much Unquietness’: Violence and Domestic Violence in Early Modern England,” Journal of Women's History (1994), in pressCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁵ Norfolk R.O. DEP/53, August 1701, Mary Hart con Charles Hart.

³⁶ Norfolk R.O. DEP/24, 1590, Joanne Barrett con Henry Barrett, fols. 17–20, 99v–100v, 130–31, esp. fol. 130; it is interesting that this witness is a man; a woman who follows directly after him asserts that there is no cause for Henry's “fierce and cruel” behavior (fol. 131).

³⁷ Corporation of London R.O., Sessions Papers 1677, January 1676/7 Quarter Sessions, Inquisition into death of Hester Que.

³⁸ Norfolk R.O. DEP/10, Book 10, June 27, 1565, Marie Beck con William Beck, testimony of Margaret Goodwyn.

³⁹ Dorset R.O. Dorset Q/S Order Book, 1625–37, fols. 19 (January 1625/6), 75 (Easter 1627), 105v (Michaelmas 1627), and 312v (Easter 1631).

⁴⁰ [Terrill, E.], The Records of a Church of Christ in Bristol, 1640–1687, ed. Hayden, Roger, Bristol Record Society 27 (1974), pp. 187–89, 194, 197–98Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Dorset R.O. Dorset Q/S Rolls, January 1709/10, October 1710 (Keeper's calendar); also complaints of Anna Coombe, December 12, 1709, and September 11, 1710.

⁴² Dorset R.O. Dorset Q/S Rolls, Mich. 1710, John Hodges July 26, 1710; Amussen, , An Ordered Society (n. 12 above), pp. 166–68Google Scholar.

⁴³ Amussen, , An Ordered Society, pp. 159–61Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Norfolk R.O. C/S3/13A, Petition of Thomas Nashe, John Cooper and John Westwreye against Hugh Ithell and Parnell his wife.

⁴⁵ Keith Wrightson has found that between 14 percent and 23 percent of all women bearing bastards in Essex and Lancashire named their master or someone “in a magisterial position” as the father; see Wrightson, Keith, “The Nadir of English Illegitimacy in the Seventeenth Century,” in Bastardy and Its Comparative History, ed. Laslett, Peter, Oosterveen, Karla, and Smith, Richard (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), pp. 176–91, esp. p. 187Google Scholar; masters could, of course, place similar pressures on male servants for homosexual sex: see Bray, Alan, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London, 1982), pp. 47–50, 73Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Norfolk R.O. DEP/60 Offic. dmi promot per Edmund Jarvis con Edmund Barrett, 1725; the difficulty of her position is suggested by the use of the church courts rather than the criminal courts in this case. See the cases relating to Robert Dey, ex Officio con Robert Dey, and Robert Dey con Leonard Poole, Richard Dey, et al., Norfolk R.O. DEP/28, ff. 3–1 lv, 25–27, 89–91v, 235–37v, 239–42, 244v–45v, 247–51v, 253–56; and discussion in Amussen, Susan Dwyer, “Gender, Family and the Social Order, 1560–1725,” in Fletcher, and Stevenson, , eds. (n. 24 above), pp. 196–217, esp. p. 215Google Scholar, and “Elizabeth I and Alice Balstone: Gender, Class and the Exceptional Woman in Early Modern England,” in Attending to Women in Early Modern England, ed. Seeff, Adele and Travitsky, Betty (Dover, Del., 1994), pp. 219–40, esp. pp. 251–52Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Norfolk R.O. AYL 347, Information of Jeane Jillion, February 3, 1661/2; cf. Norfolk R.O. C/S3/23A, articles of Holme Hale against Henry Eaton, who got his servant pregnant and then tried to convince her to have an abortion, saying “that it was no sin to do so, except the child were already quickened within her, and that it was a common thing in London, for such women, to use such practices in such cases.”

⁴⁸ Quoted in Slater, Miriam, Family Life in the Seventeenth Century: The Verneys of Claydon House (London, 1984), p. 72Google Scholar; the letter suggests that Luce had also provided sexual services to Sir Ralph: how else would she have known what might “match [his] cock”?

⁴⁹ P.R.O. STAC 8/282/12, Richard Turner, Gent, con Edward Constable and w. Priscilla et al. The mockery in the story of the sow was, of course, designed to offend the judges in Star Chamber even more.

⁵⁰ P.R.O. ASSI 16/26/4, 1673, testimony of Anice Bull, June 23, 1673; although Margery Goll was indicted in the death of the child, she was acquitted at the February assizes. The wording suggests that Margery was John Goll's second wife.

⁵¹ Norfolk R.O. C/S3/23, 1622, Petition against Thomas Munsaugh; the petition alleges that Munsaugh wanted to use the adultery allegation to blackmail Stallworthy into a money settlement.

⁵² Northumberland R.O. QSB vol. 5, January 1688, pp. 14–15; I am grateful to Miranda Chaytor for this reference.

⁵³ Norfolk R.O. DEP/28, Felmingham con Felmingham, fols. 401–3, 502r–v, esp. 402 v.

⁵⁴ Norfolk R.O. DEP/34, Constance Boston con John Boston, fols. 101–7v.

⁵⁵ Norfolk R.O. DEP/53, January 28, 1696/7, Hannah Robinson con John Robinson; there is a very different account of the particular marriage in the libels and allegations from John Robinson's part found in CON/41 (1696).

⁵⁶ Terrill (n. 40 above), pp. 6–7, 12. Terrill began writing his account (partially retrospective) in 1672, though he had been a member of the congregation since 1656; for the purposes of this analysis, uncertainty about some of the early material in Terrill's account is not relevant. Broadmead was a Particular (i.e., Calvinist) Baptist congregation; see pp. 47–48. For a more general discussion of the persecution of dissenters in the Restoration, see Watts, Michael R., The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford, 1978), pp. 221–62 passimGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁷ This definition enabled household worship to continue unmolested; the rights of the household head were more important than religious uniformity.

⁵⁸ Terrill, pp. 59–65.

⁵⁹ Ibid., pp. 150–51. The use of nonviolent resistance, usually thought to be a Quaker ideal, is surprising; see Barbour, Hugh, The Quakers in Puritan England (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1964), pp. 222–23Google Scholar. The persecution of the Bristol nonconformists in the 1670s was among the harshest in England; see Watts, p. 231.

⁶⁰ Terrill, pp. 144–46, 170–71. Cann was elected to Parliament in 1677 with the support of the dissenters and became one of their important defenders there; see Watts, p. 251.

⁶¹ Terrill, p. 153.

⁶² Ibid., pp. 153–54. For riding the stang, see Thompson, E. P., “‘Rough Music’: Le charivari anglais,” Annales: Economies, societes, civilisations 27, no. 2 (1972): 285–312, esp. 287–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The stang is usually northern, so the use of the term in Bristol is unusual.

⁶³ Terrill, pp. 182–83. For repetitions of Sundays, see pp. 155–81 passim; the dissenters were certaintly helped by the election of Sir Robert Cann as mayor in October 1675; see pp. 170–75.

⁶⁴ Ibid. p. 233; the persecution was generally harsh because the king resented dissenting support for Exclusion, and was particularly intense in Bristol; see Watts, pp. 254–57. The Exclusion Crisis was the result of Protestant attempts to bar Catholics—and thus Charles II's brother and heir James—from the throne; the elections for the three parliaments of 1679–81 saw the first large-scale electoral organizing. The Rye House Plot was (allegedly) a plot of supporters of exclusion to kill the king and James.

⁶⁵ Terrill, pp. 228–29, 231, 234.

⁶⁶ Ibid. p. 244.

⁶⁷ Ibid., pp. 247, 249. Even their old nemesis John Hellier, as undersheriff of Somerset, gets involved in the chase.

⁶⁸ Ibid., pp. 249–50, 253, 260.

⁶⁹ Ibid., pp. 248, 259, 265–66. To avoid penalties, the Baptists met in small groups at designated houses instead, within the strict limits of the law; even so there were backsliders, like Brother Ford, with whom “Fear and love of his estate thus far prevailed” (p. 262). Similar pressures had led the Presbyterians to conform in March 1683. A gap in the records between January 13 and November 29, 1685 (during which time Terrill died) makes it impossible to discover precisely when the persecution ended.

⁷⁰ Ibid., pp. 227–66 passim, esp. pp. 264, 265.

⁷¹ Ibid., pp. 254, 256, cf. p. 252.

⁷² Seaver, Paul, Watlington's World: A Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth Century London (Stanford, Calif., 1985), e.g., pp. 47–66 passim, and 153–54Google Scholar. Similar ideas were part of the scurrilous royalist newspaper The Man in the Moon edited by John Crouch; see Underdown, David, “The Language of Popular Politics in the English Revolution,” in Place and Displacement in the Renaissance, ed. Vos, Alvin (Binghamton, N.Y., 1994), pp. 107–31Google Scholar. The classic seventeenth-century account of such ideas is Beard, Thomas, The Theatre of God's Judgments (London, 1597), S.T.C. 1597Google Scholar.

⁷³ For a fuller discussion of duels, see Kiernan, V. G., The Duel in European History: Honour and the Reign of Aristocracy (Oxford and New York, 1988), esp. chap. 4Google Scholar; the importance of class in the code of the duel is evident in Sir Francis Bacon's speech in Star Chamber regarding duels in 1615: “Nay, I should think, my lords, that men of birth and quality will leave the practice when it begins to be vilified, and come so low as to barber-surgeons and butchers, and such base mechanical persons,” see Cobbett's State Trials (n. 16 above), 2:1035Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ See Clark, Peter, The English Alehouse: A Social History, 1200–1830 (London and New York, 1983), pp. 123–25, 132–35Google Scholar, and chap. 7, esp. pp. 153, 154.

⁷⁵ Bodleian Library, Ms. Top. Norfolk c. 2, fol. 80; it may be significant that this feasting took place on Christmas Eve; cf. Dorset R.O. B7 A4/4, Lyme Regis Quarter Sessions, June 16, 1699, when the watchman, Thomas Brewford, used “violence and force” to get Mr. George Jackson out of the Three Cups and to his own house; Jackson threatened Brewford and one of the servants before being disarmed. Both Brewford and Jackson had histories of being quarrelsome: some years later Jackson complained of an unprovoked assault by Steven Bowdedge (B7 A4/5, May 12, 2 Anne); Brewford is in other fights while serving on the watch, and in an apparently senseless fight some years later (B7 A4/5 passim, esp. July 21, 3 Anne, also B7 A4/6, July Sessions 1711), when Brewford refuses to serve on the watch.

⁷⁶ Historical Manuscripts Commission, 13th Report, app. 6, mss. of Sir W. Fitzherbert, p. 25.

⁷⁷ P.R.O. ASSI 45 1/4, 19–21, Evidence re death of Parson Joseph Erneshaw, October 19, 1642.

⁷⁸ P.R.O. ASSI 45/1/5, 67–68, March 7, 1645/6, inquest re death of William Field of Whitley, Yorkshire.

⁷⁹ P.R.O. ASSI 45 2/2, 111–12, December 18, 1648, inquest re death of John Oldfield, late of Meltham, Yorkshire, yeoman; the civil wars may have caused an increase in the number of violent deaths because so many more people were armed, and soldiers frequently used their weapons in nonmilitary situations: see the various inquests in P.R.O. ASSI 45, i.e., 2/1, 158–60; 2/2, 121–22.

⁸⁰ P.R.O. ASSI 45 2/2, 112, information of John Hollingsworth: at one point Probart said that, “if it were not for that gentleman that came in with me, I would have struck you over the pate ere this.”

⁸¹ P.R.O. ASSI 45 2/2, 9–11, June 10, 1648, inquest into death of Joseph Walton in Staineland, Halifax, Yorkshire.

⁸² See, e.g., P.R.O. ASSI 45 2/1, 56, May 19, 1647, Robert Johnson of Durham.

⁸³ Corporation of London R.O., Sessions Papers 1678, February Sessions 1677/8, information re death of Mr. Charles Seymour, January 30, 1677/8: the status issues are murky here, but Seymour told a friend that among other terms of abuse he was called “lobster”; the Oxford English Dictionary suggests that “lobster” as an insult referred either to a red-faced man (therefore presumably one who drank or was lower class) or a parliamentary soldier.

⁸⁴ See the Dictionary of National Biography, John Donne the Younger; the case is recorded because the boy died about three weeks later, and the younger Donne was tried for manslaughter; see The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, D.D. (Oxford, 1853), 5, pt. 1:99Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ For a full discussion of the gender issues involved here, see Amussen, Susan, “The Gendering of Popular Culture in Early Modern England,” in Popular Culture in Early Modern England, ed. Harris, Tim (London, in press)Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Copet-Rougier, Elisabeth, “‘Le mal court’: Visible and Invisible Violence in an Acephalous Society—Mkako of Cameroon,” in Riches, , ed. (n. 5 above), pp. 50–69Google Scholar. Christina Lamer has argued that the scolding witch can be seen as the female equivalent of the violent male; see Larner, Christina, “Witchcraft Past and Present,” in her Witchcraft and Religion: The Politics of Popular Belief (Oxford, 1984), pp. 79–91, esp. p. 87Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ The central work on English witchcraft is Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971)Google Scholar, which focuses on witchcraft as both an explanation for the inexplicable and a response to the growing poverty of the late sixteenth century. Kunze, Michael, Highroad to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft (Chicago, 1987)Google Scholar, places the case he describes in a political context, assuming that the allegations were all false. One book that does try to analyze witchcraft as if it exists is Favret-Saada, Jeanne, Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage, trans. Cullen, Catherine (Cambridge, 1977, 1980)Google Scholar.

⁸⁸ Thomas, chap. 14, esp. pp. 442–49.

⁸⁹ The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster (London, 1612)Google Scholar, reprinted in facsimile as The Trial of the Lancaster Witches, A.D. MDCXII, ed. Harrison, G. B. (London, 1929), fol. O3, p. 115Google Scholar (future citations to this edition will include, as here, both the folio number of the original and the page in the reprint edition).

⁹⁰ Thomas, pp. 546–60; Macfarlane (n. 1 above), esp. pp. 195–96. For a broader set of offenses, see MacDonald, Michael, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth Century England (Cambridge and New York, 1981), pp. 107–10Google Scholar.

⁹¹ The Examination and Confession of Certaine Wylches at Chensford … in 1566, reprinted in Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society, vol. 8 (London, 1863–1864), pp. 24–29Google Scholar. Although it is obviously impossible to use such a confession to prove that something “happened,” the confession does depend on the existing conceptual frameworks for understanding witchcraft. Whatever duress caused Francis to make her confession, the confession itself was not randomly constructed.

⁹² The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, fol. I, p. 71; for details, see H3v–H4, pp. 68–69.

⁹³ Ibid., fols. T3–v, pp. 155–56.

⁹⁴ Ibid., fols. 13, Y4, pp. 75, 181.

⁹⁵ Fairfax, Edward, A Discourse of Witchcraft, As it was acted in the Family of Mr. Edward Fairfax of Fuystone in the County of York, in the year 1621, ed. Milnes, R. M., reprinted in Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society, vol. 5 (London, 1858–1859), p. 122Google Scholar.

⁹⁶ For reputation, more generally, see Amussen, , An Ordered Society (n. 12 above), pp. 98–101, 103–4Google Scholar, and “Feminin/Masculin” (n. 11 above), pp. 277–79.

⁹⁷ The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, fols. B3, Cv, pp. 19, 24; cf. also F. H4v, p. 54.

⁹⁸ Depositions from the Castle of York Relating to Offenses Committed in the Northern Counties in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Raine, James, Surtees Society, vol. 40 (1861), no. 118, pp. 112–14Google Scholar; unspoken insults were often recognized; see Amussen, , An Ordered Society, p. 131Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ P.R.O. ASSI 45 1/5, 38A.

¹⁰⁰ Depositions from the Castle at York, no. 162, p. 154; see also The Wonderfull Discovery of Witches, fol. 04, p. 117, when three Pendle witches were alleged to have killed Henry Mitton when he refused to give one of them a penny.

¹⁰¹ Hutton, Matthew, The Correspondence of Matthew Hutton … With a Selection of Letters, etc. of Sir Timothy Hutton, Kt., his son …, ed. Raine, James, Surtees Society, vol. 17 (1843), p. 229Google Scholar.

¹⁰² For a recent study (which arrived just as I was completing this piece) that suggests the role of conflict behind witchcraft cases, see Gregory, Annabel, “Witchcraft, Politics, and ‘Good Neighbourhood’ in early Seventeenth Century Rye,” Past and Present, no. 133 (1991), pp. 31–66Google Scholar.

¹⁰³ Depositions from The Castle at York, no. 74, pp. 74–75; see the conflict over change that led to witchcraft charges: n. 30, pp. 124–25.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., no. 189, pp. 202–3. My discussion of this case draws heavily on discussions with Miranda Chaytor, who has been working on witchcraft for many years.

¹⁰⁵ Hunt, Margaret, “Wife Beating, Domesticity and Women's Independence in Eighteenth Century London,” Gender and History 4, no. 1 (1992): 10–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁶ See Rosenberg, Tina, Children of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin America (New York, 1991)Google Scholar.