The Wonderful Discoverie Of Elizabeth Sawyer, A Witch,...

In this document commentary I will be analysing and commentating on an extract from Henry Goodcole’s pamphlet, The Wonderful Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer, a Witch, late of Edmonton. Her Conviction and Condemation and Death. (London, 1621). I will be seeing how if the contemporary public felt the same way and how this relates to the history of witchcraft. Henry Goodcole was a ‘prison visitor and author [and was] best known for a series of criminal biographies, arising from his experiences as ordinary and recounting his attempts to extort confessions from the condemned in the prison’. The most famous of his visits was to Elizabeth Sawyer, who was suspected of being a witch. ‘His pamphlet on the Sawyer case included the confession he had elicited from the condemned witch while preparing her spiritually for execution’. Before sixteenth century, the ability to read and write was low. But during the century there was growth in education for the public and illiteracy was decreasing. ‘It is estimated that in 1600 about 10 per cent of women in England were literate; by 1700 this had risen to perhaps 30 per cent’. In 1650 the male literacy rate ‘rose to almost a half’. The biggest form of reading was through reading print and ‘it was this mode of literacy that provided the foundation for pamphlet culture’. Despite the low literacy rates many peoples workplaces ‘allowed them to hear texts they could not read instead’. ‘Elizabeth Sawyer, was a poor woman of obscure origins