The Witch was constructed as a foil to the hegemonic expectations of early modern gender roles and as a tool in policing processes of asserting proper behaviour. These transgressions occurred predominately in the domestic sphere and were perpetuated therein. Drawing from medieval humoral theory, blood and milk are not only one and the same, but more broadly representative of the Witch’s immutable corruption and that of the nurturing Mother. Records reveal inspections validated accusations of nighttime copulation with the Devil (sexual) and suckling imps (maternal) with the payment of blood. Described as teats, the physical marks of “suckling familiars” (Impes) became definitive of English evidentiary practice. I argue the gendered body becomes the site of individual and social corruption. It is informed by deposition records of 1600-1649 throughout the eastern counties, including Essex, Kent, Suffolk, and Sussex. This study examines the increased anxieties and corresponding witch-panics of the English Civil War throughout the early seventeenth century. Accusations of witchcraft throughout early modern England were evidence of a popular imagination which understood sin within frameworks of tainted bodies bound by gender and sexuality.
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