ABSTRACT

This chapter explores some of the instabilities in early modern masculine governance as they are represented in evidence against men accused of witchcraft in England and New England during the seventeenth century. It covers a period of profound change in English societies: the English Civil Wars, particularly, created profound shifts in a variety of cultural discourses; the puritan migration established a 'New England' and the English Atlantic world. The unresolved issue underlying this chapter is our current lack of understanding regarding the transhistorical resilience of patriarchal ideologies. While the power these young accusers accrued requires much further, and better, attention than it has attracted to date, for the author's purposes here they demonstrate that masculine governance was not as exclusive as early modern ideologues might have us believe nor as early modern historians might lead us to expect.