Wives, Widows, Witches and Bitches

This book is a study of women and witchcraft in seventeenth-century Devon. It focuses on the social, political, economic, and religious factors in the county and various borough towns which led them to be likely to single out women for the crime of witchcraft. It also deals with female alehouse keepers, defamation suits brought by women against other women for sexual slander, wills, administrations, and the disposal of real and personal wealth by and to women in this period.