On the streets, in the courts: practices and ‘modes’ of defamation

The disputes that undoubtedly lay behind many defamation causes are often shadowy; the examination of other source material that might help to bring some of them to light - such as tithe and property disputes or commercial rivalries - was beyond the scope of this study.¹ There are occasional hints within the depositions themselves; for example, Elizabeth Addison said to one witness that ‘that pocky burnt whore Hartnes wife... had got all the custome’, and told another ‘that she would not let her daughter there but whied her to her house to spend her money’.² Thomas Penrose complained to the court that during the three years in which he had been tax-collector he had frequently asked the Ballards for their payment but ‘that payment was not only neglected but sometimes absolutely refused to be made’.³ This does not tell us any more about the causes of that particularly hostile confrontation, but it does suggest that it had a long-standing history.

It is not, therefore, possible to offer any conclusions here as to the reasons why certain disputes, certain words, led to litigation in individual cases. Rather, this chapter will explore aspects of ‘strategic practices’ of defamation, and possible factors in the initiation of legal action, through exploring three interacting ‘modes’ of defamation, the means by which such disputes might be pursued: ‘face-to-face’, ‘circulatory’ and ‘official’. ‘Face-to-face’ defamation involves public arguments, challenges and abusive exchanges between the individuals who are subsequently involved in litigation. By ‘circulatory’ defamation is meant the speaking of ‘scandalous’ words about individuals who are not actually present, including ‘gossip’, flowing around local channels of communication. ‘Official’ defamation concerns the ensuing court cases themselves, and ‘legal narratives’ of credit and discredit; in particular, contests over the credit of witnesses will be examined. In each case, questions of the difference that gender (among other facets of identity, status and authority) could make to the power of (spoken) words about reputation, and to the speakers and subjects of those words, will be addressed.

In research on defamation and insult, there is frequently an emphasis on the need for insults to be taken seriously to have serious effects. David Garrioch argues, in the context of verbal insults in eighteenth-century Paris, that ‘if the listeners actually believed the accusations then the victim’s livelihood would suffer’.⁴ Christopher Haigh has suggested that the main motivation behind sixteenth-century defamation suits was to forestall prosecution for the imputed crime in the church courts.⁵ However, ‘truth’ was not the church courts’ only criterion in assessing defamation. ‘Nothing in the English Constitution expressly required that the imputation have been spoken falsely. Truth was not a stated defence’. A true accusation might have been made maliciously and be defamatory.⁶ Conversely, the courts may have been recognising that defamation did not necessarily have to be thought to be true to do damage. Consider the one and only allegation of bestiality in the York causes: Robert Wryley was sued for saying that Frances Eyre ‘made use of her dog and that her dog bugger’d her foulre’d her and fucked her’.⁷ It sounds totally malicious and entirely laughable - which is the point. Did these words need to be believed to carry the potential to undermine Frances’ standing among her neighbours and especially, say, among her servants or enemies? How would she maintain personal authority and status if she became the butt of sniggering jokes, if she was no longer taken seriously?⁸ What was at stake was ‘face’, a concept as familiar to contemporaries as to modern sociologists, and a crucial component of early modern reputation, though ‘constructions of shame... have been privileged over, or compounded with, those of affront’ in much research into defamation and slander.⁹

Equally, though, many causes did revolve around ‘shame’ and the truth of allegations of immorality (which should not, however, preclude the significance of ‘affront’ in these situations as well). For example, Anne and Michael Hall accused Mary Brocket of having adulterous sex with Frank Harrison in very specific terms. Moreover, where defendants tended to denial or disclaimer in their responses, Anne forcefully reasserted her allegations:

she this respondent... upon the eleaventh day of June at night did see... Francis Harrison in bed with... Mary Brockett, and she this respondent further beleives that... Francis Harrison did ly and keep company with... Mary Brockett all that night,... Mary haveing sent her maid the said night to lodge in one Ann Ancklands house.

Anne strongly denied any malicious or defamatory intent, however: her position was one of justifiably reproving her neighbour for wrong-doing. Additionally, one of the witnesses emphasised how seriously she had taken the Halls’ words; following the accusations, ‘there were other words passed but she this examinate was soe much concerned and soe angry that... Harrison had been with her [Mary] all night that she this deponent did not observe what they were’.¹⁰

Just as the significance and prominence of sexual language in insults varied between causes, then, defamation itself was as multi-faceted as the reputation it attacked, and powerful because of its adaptability. Insults, rarely intended literally, created ‘scenes’ which disrupted an individual’s ‘self-presentation’ and threatened their relationships with their neighbours.¹¹ We are looking at a range of linguistic practices linked together by the crucial importance of spoken words to reputation.¹² Defamation could undermine reputation in a variety of ways, and the motives of victims of defamation who took the step of defending themselves through the courts, too, were complex and varied.

Many of the defamatory exchanges recorded by witnesses were face-to-face encounters, often part of angry quarrels conducted in the street or, very often, from doorways: highly public affairs, as people gathered to find out what was happening. (Publicity was, of course, a necessary precondition for a lawsuit: without an audience of some kind, there could be no witnesses to give evidence and, moreover, no damage to reputation.) A witness explained that she was in her house when she ‘did heare a noyse and great stirre in the streete and thereupon going out of doors with her child in her armes’, discovered Anne Brittaine and Robert Clarke ‘chiding together’ outside.¹³ Frequently, the audience was already in place, in a shop or ‘in company’. A group of customers were gathered in Christopher Welburne’s bookshop when William Beeforth came in and told Welburne ‘he was come to pay him what he ought him and then laid downe some moneys’. Welburne counted the money and said that it did not cover Beeforth’s debts, at which Beeforth called him ‘a rogue, a knave and a rascall’, ‘the greatest knave that ever kept shop in Petergate’.¹⁴

At the wedding feast of John and Anne Lackwood, Mary Allanson came in (‘although not invited beinge a rude woman and of a distracted condition’) and ‘did there chide and brawle’ with Christopher Holmes - who had apparently promised her marriage.¹⁵ These public disputes often have a distinctly ‘theatrical’ feel: it does not seem entirely accidental that Christopher Welburne’s shop was full of customers when William Beeforth arrived, nor - especially given the nature of her complaint - does it feel as though Mary Allanson’s choice of venue was a random one. David Garrioch suggests that, where there were existing grievances, insults could be ‘an appeal for public mediation’, and a challenge to the adversary to justify their position or make concessions.¹⁶ Similarly, a defamation cause can be seen ‘as the first step towards bringing neighbourly tensions to a close, as well as a symptom of such tensions as already existed’.¹⁷ Mary Allanson sued Christopher Holmes for defamation, although his own words were rather ambiguous, according to the witnesses, who were distinctly unsympathetic towards her; both her initial actions and the following defamation suit look like rather desperate and ineffective attempts to recruit public opinion to place pressure on Holmes to keep his word.

In some disputes, insults themselves seem to be a sign of defeat: an angry, frustrated reaction to a failure to bring such pressure to bear. In the case of Benjamin Mangye, a witness recorded that she was drinking in company with Mr Smith and some others when

the said Benjamin Mangye (coming into the roome) asked the said Mr Smith if he could remember that one Lambert had taken some silver of or out of the said Benjamin Mangyes shopp counter to which the said Mr Smith replyed that he knew nothing of the matter and told him he wondered that he would offer such a thing to him or to that purpose.

It was at this point that Mangye ‘grew very passionate’ and made the allegations against Smith and Sarah Bigg that landed him in court. Sarah herself was not recorded as being present, and appears to have initiated the suit as a result of public scandal.¹⁸ Insulting words, re-told and circulating around the neighbourhood, could be powerful and damage their subject without empowering their original speaker.

The kind of verbal violence recorded in these encounters is familiar in another legal context: prosecutions for ‘scolding’ and ‘barratry’, which have received attention from a number of historians.¹⁹ Focusing on scolding, witnesses show overwhelming disapproval of the behaviour it represents. A frequently stated virtue was to ‘live quietly amongst one’s neighbours’. Witnesses speak of litigants ‘scolding’, ‘brawling’ or ‘chiding’; and they regularly label the actions of defendants in these terms. For example, Jane Carter called Isabella Thompson a ‘whore’ in ‘an angry and scolding manner’, and Grace Horner slandered Jane Morrett in ‘an angry scoulding and malitious manner’.²⁰ ‘Scolding’ was firmly associated with women (although men might well speak in ‘an abusive and reprochfull’ or ‘a very passionate and angry’ manner).²¹ And yet, while it could be used in this way to present a negative picture of a woman in a legal narrative, ‘scold’ did not, it seems, have the power to defame her on the streets: it does not appear in any of the verbal insults. This contrast might suggest that this was an area where legal officials and institutions had different priorities from women who used the courts - something that could, however, be manipulated when using those courts. As Kermode and Walker have suggested, ‘litigation involving scolds reflects the ways in which ordinary people used the legal process for their own ends as much as it reflects assumptions about the offence itself’.²²

It might be argued that intense concern with scolds, shrews and ‘women on top’, which might well translate into its use as an insult and sensitivity towards being called a ‘scold’, was a feature of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a ‘crisis in gender relations’, and had declined by this time.²³ However, Sharpe’s analysis of defamation in the 1590s does not indicate particular anxiety in the earlier period either: there was only one ‘scold’ in the sample.²⁴ Martin Ingram, examining patterns of prosecution between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth century more closely, has argued that they do not justify the use of such terms as ‘crisis’, ‘obsession’ or ‘epidemic’.²⁵ There is also doubt that it was a new phenomenon in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods.²⁶ What happened to prosecutions (in church or secular courts) later in the seventeenth century needs more attention. But defamation does seem to offer another perspective, alongside both records of prosecution and ‘literary’ sources, onto this topic, especially as scolding (and barratry) and defamation share a close association with disputes between neighbours.²⁷

One common theme of insults against women that does relate to this issue has been discussed: that of ‘impudence’. The image of the impudent, ‘brazen-faced’ woman is not the same as the trouble-making, malicious ‘scold’, but she does break some of the same rules; she is bold, shameless and rude - especially towards her ‘betters’. The image symbolises overlapping concerns about disorderly, disobedient women; ‘brazen-faced’ can have additional connotations of deceptiveness and hypocrisy, expressing anxieties about distinguishing honest from dishonest women.²⁸ These are, of course, stereotypes. But they are complex stereotypes, adaptable to varied circumstances. Kermode and Walker rightly warn against treating scolding ‘as a catch-all for diverse behaviour’.²⁹ Conversely, though, to focus too narrowly on ‘the taming (or not) of the scold’, on prosecutions for certain kinds of verbal act, obscures the complexity of gendered experiences of the power of words.

‘Gossip’ has received considerable recent attention from historians concerned with women and gender.³⁰ Appropriately enough, it is less immediately obvious in these sources than the ‘face-to-face’ exchanges discussed. But it is, in its own elusive way, to be found everywhere; whenever witnesses speak of the ‘fame’ of litigants (or other witnesses), they are referring to its effects, good or bad. Reputation depended on the opinions and words of one’s neighbours, how one was ‘accompted’ by them. And, equally, any individual’s ability to actually influence this process of reputation-making and -breaking depended on the current state of their account-sheet amongst their neighbours.³¹ It is quite true that litigation was most likely to be initiated after ‘loose words spoken in anger’.³² The trouble was that such words would be re-told and rapidly circulated by their audiences, with potential consequences that are largely obscure to the historian but should not for that reason be underestimated.

Neighbourhood ‘gossip’ could take the words spoken in anger between individuals, broadcast them, re-shape them, manipulate them, and perhaps even lead to a law suit not intended or desired by the original protagonists. The specific possibility of a prosecution for immorality, suggested by Christopher Haigh, would have been just one of a range of feared potential consequences of the circulation of scandal.³³ Occasionally witnesses stated particular effects: on livelihood, marriage prospects, employment opportunities.³⁴ Far more often, they simply alluded to the harm done to the plaintiff’s ‘good name and reputation’ amongst his or her neighbours; the seriousness of this, it seems, could be largely taken for granted. Dave Peacock notes a varied range of situations where good reputation could be of vital importance, including applications for poor relief, when appearing in court and in business or officeholding.³⁵ Indeed, given the sheer range of possible consequences of lessened or lost reputation, the uncertainties of the situation - the defamation might not cause ‘real’ trouble, but could one take that risk? - should be seen as a factor in decisions to litigate.

Bridget Hodgson’s words about Hester Browne were represented by witnesses in almost stereotyped images of ‘gossip’. Bridget, ‘telling of newes in the city[,] asked the companye if they did not heare the newes in the town’; on being asked ‘what newes’, she replied ‘doe not you heare that your neighbours waiting maide lyes in at Micklegate Barr’. On another occasion, a churching where Bridget was present as the midwife of the new mother, she came to Elizabeth Wright and ‘there whispered her in the eares and asked her if she knew where Hester Browne was... to which this examinate replyed, that she thought she was at Beverly, but the said Mrs Hodgson sayd Naye, she is without Micklegate Barr brought in bed of a childe’. This ‘whispering’ is itself ambiguous, capable of bearing two interpretations: positive, as discretion, or negative, as slyness. The witnesses, at any rate, were evidently sympathetic towards Bridget; they firmly asserted their opinion that she had not spoken the words ‘with any intent to defame’; and assessments of the plaintiff’s reputation (or the effect upon it of Bridget’s words) are notable by their absence.³⁶ As a midwife, Bridget would have been in a privileged position to learn of such a story: at least, her neighbours and clients were ready to give credit to her words.

In many cases, witnesses were less sympathetic towards the defamer, and emphasised the harm done to the ‘good name’ of the defamed. A witness told how she was about to leave Grace Tennant’s bakehouse when Grace called her back to look at Anne Mitchell, who was passing by, saying

see thou this brazen faced whore and when this examinate asked whome she meant, she said Nanny Mitchell... and this examinate said Na sure it is not soe, to whome... Grace replyed, yes hang her she’s with barne, and further she said that Dalking... was very kinde with her and that it was well if he had not a finger in the pye... and she alsoe said that... Thomas Dalking was a rancke whoremaster and that he had gott one bastard already.

Moreover,

in this examinate’s oppinion the good name and credit of both... Anne Mitchell and Thomas Dalking are much hurt and impaired by speakeing words predeposed for that since the speakeing thereof severall persons have cast the same in theire teeth.³⁷

These two cases show rather different attitudes towards ‘gossip’, both subject and speaker. That partly reflects the contrasting styles of the two women; but it also related to the relative ‘credit’ of defamer and defamed. Bridget’s audience was eager to hear her ‘newes’; Grace’s words were met with doubt - which probably heightened her indignation and exacerbated her verbal assault. In terms of possible consequences for the victim, however, distinctions between the two should probably not be exaggerated. Both cases led, after all, to a defamation suit; ‘severall persons’ were less sympathetic towards Anne Mitchell and Thomas Dalking than their witnesses in court.

As words circulate, they move beyond the control of the original sources of their subject matter. In re-tellings, we find variations in the stories told. Elizabeth Addison and Deborah Younge both slandered Susan Hartnes in substantially the same terms: ‘pocky whore’, ‘George Lamplough’s whore for five years’, but Deborah offered an additional detail: ‘he had the use of her seaventeen tymes’.³⁸ It acts as an authenticating detail; such precision would look like the offender’s own confession - in which case, her confidant(s) had told others.³⁹ Otherwise, it represents someone’s creative invention, which seems quite possible: if it had been part of the story from the beginning, it is unlikely that Elizabeth would have left it out of her vehement attacks (or that the witnesses would have omitted it).

We can never know where it originated; but it is not unlikely that contemporaries, too, would have found it difficult to track down. As rumours spread, flowing around the channels of communication and evaluation, they can undergo change; they also provide a degree of anonymity. Compared to direct confrontation, gossip is - to judge by the relative infrequency of defamation suits against individual ‘gossips’ - a much safer mode of defamation. As L. R. Poos points out, the gossip’s classic defence - I only repeated what I heard from others - both lends weight to the words and relieves the speaker of sole responsibility for them.⁴⁰ Anonymity, moreover, would be particularly useful to two groups: rivals and disaffected subordinates of the victim. Here was the opportunity to damage a reputation, to take revenge for personal slights or ill-treatment, or simply to circumspectly mock and criticise a representative of a more privileged, powerful group.⁴¹ (This is not to say that all gossipers were thus motivated, simply that gossip was an ideal vehicle for those who were). This anonymity, though, was crucial unless the gossiper had the security of a powerful position. If not, it was extremely dangerous to be identified as the source of defamation, or as a particularly visible agent in its circulation.

And, as Margaret Knowsley and many other women discovered to their cost, among the most dangerous (and difficult) words they could speak were those about their experiences of sexual assault or rape.⁴² When Margaret Richardson alleged that John Mould (identified as ‘gentleman’, it should be noted) had sexually assaulted her, she found herself in court accused of defamation. As it emerged from witnesses, she told a number of people how he came into her chamber, where she was in bed, took hold of her smock and forced it down, or tore it ‘from the shoulder to the elbow almost’, and ‘touched the secretest places about her’. In one account, he would in fact have raped her if her daughters, who were sleeping in another bed in the same room, had not suddenly woken up and disturbed him.

Margaret well knew the difficulties of her situation; as she said to one witness with a desperate vehemence, ‘if thou wilt beleive mee that I have any skinn of my face Mr Mould knows as well what I am as my owne husband that lyes with mee’. Another female witness equally understood the danger: she ‘gave her warning to take care what shee said for else she would come to trouble’, to which Margaret replied defiantly that she did not care and was prepared to take her oath on it. But it is, perhaps, the reaction of a male witness that is most telling of all: he ‘told her again that shee was a whore indeed that would neither serve a man in his need nor keepe his [ ]’. This file has unfortunately suffered some damage and the very end of his comment is lost, but the sentiment is clear enough. To risk a guess, the missing fragment might be along the lines of ‘trust’ or ‘good name’; that is, criticising her precisely for speaking about what had happened and bringing Mould into disrepute.⁴³

The response of men such as John Mould to these accusations, like other men’s causes based on sexual defamations, does show clearly that sexual conduct could matter enough to male reputation to be defended vigorously through the courts. At the same time, this kind of case puts into perspective Bernard Capp’s recent argument that ‘men’s anxiety over sexual reputation’ could ‘provide women with a valuable means of redress or effective leverage in a variety of circumstances’.⁴⁴ As his own evidence frequently suggests, few women, from the genuinely wronged to the criminal blackmailer, succeeded in bringing such pressure to bear unless they had substantial support, from relatives or friends (or, indeed, criminal colleagues). Many of his examples are precisely of failure to do so, regardless of the legitimacy of the women’s position: illustrations of just how ineffective this was as a means of redress or leverage.⁴⁵ Moreover, a woman in Margaret Richardson’s situation found herself in a cruel bind: if she possessed sufficient ‘credit’ to gain a hearing and support, she endangered it simply by speaking of her experience; it was difficult for her to avoid the ‘guilty self-implication’ of confession.⁴⁶ Male sexual reputation could indeed be important; but that does not necessarily mean that women were able to ‘take advantage’ of it to any significant degree.

The recently-studied stories of Stephen Jerome and Margaret Knowsley and of Robert Foulkes, point to a rather different argument: that it was men, not women, who could make most use of such ‘anxieties’ about male sexual reputation.⁴⁷ It has been noted that, in this York sample, men were far more likely to bring defamation causes against other men than against women, and when they did, nearly all their witnesses were also men. And, as has already been suggested, gossip and rumour did not always benefit those who can be identified as their source, but they might well be used by those who could remain relatively anonymous, or, alternatively, possessed the luxury of high levels of the variables that made up status, reputation and authority. Margaret Knowsley (who had little of these) quite clearly became caught up in local power struggles that were not her own.⁴⁸ And it was Margaret - not the powerful local men who attempted to use her words to attack Jerome; not her supposed friends who betrayed her confidence; not those, women or men, who remained in the anonymous majority in circulating scandal - who paid the price of the failure to make those words stick.

Robert Foulkes was less fortunate than Stephen Jerome - fatally so, as he was ultimately executed for the infanticide of his illegitimate child - and this might be related to a notable feature of his case: the prominence in the circulation of sexual scandal about Foulkes of men’s words. David Turner’s discussion of Foulkes’ case strongly challenges any assumption that gossip and rumour were a ‘feminine’ style of discourse, or that male rumour-mongering was not subject to disapproval.⁴⁹ Richard Allestree certainly rejected both lines of thought: ‘as to this particular of defaming, both sexes seem to be at a vie: and I think he were a very critical judge, that could determine between them’.⁵⁰ However, Turner suggests that men in Foulkes’ case ‘spread tales with a good deal of confidence’, and more ‘publicly’ than did women, which ‘may have reflected an altogether greater security with which such men could activate rumour and scandal, for which women were potentially more susceptible to judicial sanctions and public shaming’.⁵¹ Gossip and rumour are gendered, but not in terms of simple behavioural labels. And, again, this is not simply a matter of gender, but a gendered dimension of inequal power structures: the distinctions noted by Turner are those between gossip as a ‘weapon of the weak’ and a ‘weapon of the powerful’.

Most defamations are much less polarised than this, however; they are contests between ‘equals’ or near-equals rather than encounters between ‘weak’ and ‘powerful’. Indeed, F. G. Bailey suggests, the most intense competition often takes place between closely-connected ‘people competing to remain equal’; those distanced by disparities in status do not compete in this way.⁵² The competition expressed through defamation can be seen in terms of manoeuvring to improve or defend one’s interests and influence, by challenging and disrupting those of others. This may result in negotiation and reconciliation; it can sometimes lead to escalating disruptions, with challenge provoking counter-challenge. But defamation has another highly influential ‘life’ beyond the range and control of those directly involved in such challenges, circulating the neighbourhood as scandalous gossip; a wider social existence which re-connects with individuals’ concerns with their public reputations. These patterns are, interestingly, as much a feature of litigation itself as the events which are being described in witnesses’ accounts. Files of cause papers can range from the bare details of the formal articles (with, perhaps, equally formal responses) to bulky sets of documents in which the majority are not about the plaintiff or defendant at all, but about the ‘credit’ of their witnesses. Sometimes the reader even has a sense of quite unrelated neighbourhood disputes receiving a surreptitious airing in the space provided by another individual’s decision to go to court.

Just as the church courts, and especially defamation litigation, provided rare legal opportunities for women as plaintiffs, so it was for women as witnesses. Overall, in the York causes, men do outnumber women as witnesses, but that arises primarily as a result of the overwhelming preponderance of male witnesses - just over 90 per cent of those called - in causes contested between men. In causes between women, female witnesses predominated, but not to the same extent, making up approximately 70 per cent of the witnesses. In mixed-gender causes, the gender balance of the witnesses was almost even. This situation would suggest that in contests between men, women’s words simply did not carry the same weight - although it should be remembered that many of the encounters took place in male-dominated contexts, whether in working environments or ‘in company’. Looking at the causes where the credit of witnesses was contested, on the other hand, one does not get the impression that women’s testimony was inherently less trusted, more easily attacked, than that of men.

There were gendered differences in the issues that were likely to be raised, reflecting the gendered meanings of honesty and credit. And yet, once again, these are not absolute or simple differences. Male witnesses were very likely to be accused of ‘dishonesty’ in business or work, women of ‘sexual’ dishonesty, including bastardy; but these represent tendencies and placings of emphasis rather than absolutes. Two witnesses, Sarah Hudson and Mark Knagge, appeared to give evidence for Elizabeth Ashton when she sued Martha Coates. Sarah was accused of ‘light and unhandsome carriage’, of frequenting the company of soldiers and vagrants and of leading a ‘vicious’ and ‘lewd’ life. Mark’s alleged offences centred, in some detail, on his bad behaviour as an apprentice, not only being ‘addicted’ to swearing and lying, but also cheating and stealing from his master and his customers. But the list of his ‘crimes’ did also include, if in rather vague terms, ‘lewd and loose life and conversation’.⁵³ And sexual conduct was far from being the only issue that could be raised about female witnesses.

Moreover, if defamation tends to focus on negatives, ‘dishonour’ rather than ‘honour’, it is in these contests about witnesses that more positive attributes are also likely to be described. The legal context of these statements needs to be borne in mind; it is difficult to know how much resonance some of the issues that could be raised (such as those concerning church attendance and understanding of oath-taking) would have had outside the court. Others, though, such as emphases on ‘industriousness’ and ‘neighbourliness’ were significant components of popular constructions of ‘honesty’ and ‘credit’. And, after all, the institution and its officers also influenced the composition of defamation from verbal insults and exchanges in a number of ways that should not be overlooked.

‘Honest labour’ is a neglected component of the construction of honesty and reputation, especially for ‘plebeian’ women, again partly as the result of the emphasis on sexual defamation.⁵⁴ While ‘occupational’ identities were much stronger for men than women, ‘industriousness’ was a positive quality for both women and men.⁵⁵ Moreover, it was an important one for countering allegations of ‘poverty’ and ‘dependency’. Katherine Watson was one of those called to give evidence against Elizabeth Sellar for defaming Margaret Pape. George Dickinson, corroborated by his wife, deposed that Katherine had been apprenticed to him by the city (suggesting that she was a pauper-apprentice), that she had run away from his service twice and he suspected her of stealing from him, and that ‘she was and is a very poore indigent person’. However, two witnesses defended Katherine: ‘a very honest laborious girle, not poore or indigent but maintaines herself very hansomely by her honest endeavores’; ‘a very civil laborious girle and mainetaines herselfe very hansomely and credibly’.⁵⁶

The starting point of attacks on the credit of John and Elizabeth Stephenson, witnesses for Elizabeth Ballard, was that they were ‘very poore’ (before they went on to extensive details of John’s particular offences which included theft of food and books and cheating both employers and workmates), and that they were dependent on the Ballards for their living, except for a small income from selling ale (which was in itself represented by the witnesses as a discrediting activity). Elizabeth Ballard responded that John and Elizabeth were ‘very honest laborious and industrious people’, not dependent on her or her husband at all, and brought witnesses to testify to their regular attendance at church.⁵⁷ ‘Dependency’ - the opposite of the independence that was so important to middling status and identity - was in a number of cases used to suggest susceptibility to pressure to lie under oath. Servants were clearly vulnerable to such suggestions. In two causes brought by Mary Grayson, against Theophilus Young and Jane Tockets (alias Young, presumably married or related to Theophilus), the defendants complained that the witnesses were servants of Mr Marmaduke Butler, and that as Mary was his housekeeper, she had ‘great power command and influence’ over them.⁵⁸

All kinds of ‘dishonesty’, as well as swearing and cursing, and enmity towards a litigant, could be used to suggest perjury, which was a crucial element in attempts to undermine witnesses’ testimony. Both of Christian Needham’s witnesses against in her cause against Anne Harland were described as ‘professed’, ‘implacable’ enemies of the Harlands; Jane Robinson had ‘openly declared since this suite begun that she would not stick to forswear herselfe to doe them an injury’, and Francis Taylor had ‘publickly declared since this suite begun... that he would ruine’ the Harlands. These drew countering denials, positive assertions of Robinson’s and Taylor’s honesty and integrity and negative allegations against a number of those women who had testified against Robinson and Taylor as ‘persons of very bad life and conversation’, ‘of little or no credit amongst their neighbours’, who ‘might easily be prevailed with to swear an untruth’. One, Margaret Newham, was described as ‘a distracted person and sometimes kept up in the house of correction as such’. Another was alleged to have had two bastard children. But these accusations, again, led to further defences: ‘a very honest lawfull and industrious woman’, ‘of good and quiet life’, ‘of good credit’. Margaret Newham ‘has sometimes been disordered and somewhat distracted by fitts with troubles and vexation, but when she’s out of such fitts she is very sensible and capable’ and ‘behaves herself very civilly with a great deale of respect amongst her said neighbours’. This cause ultimately involved a total of fourteen witnesses - of whom only two testified to the original incident over which Christian Needham sued.⁵⁹

That encounter is obscured as witnesses, using a range of strategies, contested the honesty and credit of other witnesses. Even so, the conflict between Christian and Anne remains at the centre of the case; without it, none of the testimonies would exist in any case. Further, the two litigants would undoubtedly have chosen their witnesses with some care, informed by their knowledge of local relationships and reputations. Complex dynamics of neighbourhood politics, more often masked by the litigants’ immediate, personal interactions, can be glimpsed at work in this case. As with ‘gossip’, the fact that these manifestations of neighbourhood politics are less easily observed, largely anonymous background whisperings rather than noisy verbal dramas played out between individuals, should not lead to underestimating their importance. Individual litigants’ chances of success in court depended vitally on their standing amongst their neighbours, on being able to call on the support of ‘credible’ and sympathetic witnesses. In turn, what made a witness credible depended not simply on individual ability to craft an effective, believable narrative, but also on ‘public opinion’ or, to be more accurate, public opinions. We are not looking at consensus, as the competing and contradictory assessments of witnesses clearly indicate. Having pointed out the importance of one’s existing ‘stock’ of credit, the complexities of its constitutive elements, combined with subjective differences of opinion, tensions and rivalries, created the possibility of change. Reputation was never fixed or final; whether male or female, it was not formed on a single spectrum, nor was it based on absolute difference. Defamation involved attempts to influence opinions, to persuade, to alter the existing balances; and, as reputation could be attacked and contested, so it had to be continually maintained and defended.