Perjury and Memory in the English Law Courts, 1660–1688

Abstract

This thesis explores the relationships between memory and witness perjury, or lying under oath, in the law courts of later seventeenth-century England. Although there has been excellent work on perjury in early modern England, this work is limited for the later seventeenth century, and does not interrogate questions of memory. Memory is a fertile but underused lens through which to explore the concept of perjury because it formed the basis, in theory, for all witness testimony, and therefore illuminates how contemporaries thought about the accuracy of their memories as witness testimony, as well as how people remembered past legal disputes. Furthermore, contemporary attitudes towards perjury have not informed the rich scholarship on early modern memory in legal settings. Contemporary understandings of perjury are particularly interesting to consider in this period, when the divisions of the mid-seventeenth-century Civil Wars and a rise in partisanship had eliminated any certainty in the meaning of ‘truth’, as several scholars have demonstrated. This thesis therefore expands the scholarship on early modern perjury by considering the neglected question of how it was understood in connection with memory, and by exploring this relationship in the specific context of the later seventeenth century, and its debates about truth. This thesis begins by tracing contemporary definitions of perjury from the medieval period to the seventeenth century, and their religious and secular implications. The remainder of the thesis approaches the relationship between memory and perjury through different law courts, from the local Quarter Sessions and the consistory courts to the Court of King’s Bench. It explores different types of remembering that could inform witness testimony, including individual memory, collective memory, and customary memory. It also assesses if and how local understandings of perjury differed from the more formal legal definitions being used at the higher courts, and the role that memory played in each case. This thesis brings into conversation social histories of the importance of memory to early modern people with studies of truth in the Restoration era and legal histories of perjury and evidence. In so doing, it contributes to the social history of the law by highlighting the importance of memory to the legal process and exploring attitudes towards perjury at a range of social levels (not just at the level of the educated elite). This research demonstrates that memory is a useful frame through which to examine the legal and social phenomenon of perjury, both in highlighting its key characteristics and in shaping how it was prosecuted and punished. This study of perjury highlights the potential fallibility and vulnerability of memory in witness testimony. It emphasises conflict and dysfunctionality in early modern communities, and the potential for the legal system to be abused and manipulated. Finally, it argues for the crucial significance of the law courts as venues for defining and shaping individual and collective understandings of truth in this period.