Relating Early Modern Depositions

Historians of early modern protest rely heavily on depositions related by witnesses, who may well also have been participants, to reconstruct riot and unrest. Having outlined the relationships between depositions and the interrogatories which prompted them, and between those interrogatories and evidence collected earlier in the legal process, this chapter demonstrates that interrogatories themselves can be used profitably in the reconstruction of popular protest. Indeed, where they survive, affidavits on which interrogatories were based are shown to be key documents in that reconstruction. Specific episodes of fenland, moorland and forest riots are discussed where conflicting ‘relations’ of the same events can be compared and contrasted, and in the process a typology of witnesses’ modes of response to interrogatories is offered. Furthermore, it becomes clear that, in addition to named deponents, there were many others, some now impossible to identify, who had related their memories to the authorities.