“Raising the left hand, he took hold of the Saint’s fingers and put his fingers between them.”

This was perhaps one of the stranger moments in the entire chronicle. It does show, however, the mystical nature of the Saint himself. The body itself is completely intact and not subject to decay. His head is intact, his toes and feet are intact. Almost as if to confirm this, each of the Saint’s limbs is examined. Certainly, they would have thought as well that there was some divine grace or favor connected with the touching of the Saint’s body, almost as if he were a relic.

“According to Anne’s account, from an early stage her father attempted to make her symptoms seem more compelling by keeping her drugged” (9).

This quote shows one of the main reasons why Anne was acting the way she did. Her father was abusing her physically and emotionally, but it got to the part where he was taking over her life when he drugged her. Her father drugging her shows that he will do whatever it takes to benefit himself. He had Anne reading several books on witches, so she already had an idea in her head on how she should act but it was not enough for her father. He had to make sure that she was convincing everyone in the town.

“She was so afflicted that her father and others thought she was going to die, and they ’caused the passing bell to be tolled for her'”(p.57)

I think it is curious how Anne almost died, but her father still decided to go on with the con. He seems overly into their act, and I don’t see why people continue to go on with it, including himself. He wanted to go through all of this to get back at the Gregory family. I wish we could know what happened at the football game. It appears that the father didn’t lose any family members in that fight, but the Gregory family did. He is upset because the Gregory family tried to have him punished for what he did. I feel that the dad is causing too many problems in this town. I think it is problematic that people go along with and support his activity. People need to watch what they are being lead into doing.

“Anne’s attempts to comply with her father’s wishes [were] a desperate effort by an unloved child to gain her father’s affection.”

I believe that, on the surface, this quote demonstrates a sad reality between Anne and her father. She felt that she had to do everything her father said in order to win his affection. I think, however, this also speaks to the level of importance that the nuclear family plays during this time. Whether a result of society or of nature, Anne felt that it was necessary to have her father’s approval. No doubt this was, as we may experience it today, a result of her love for her father, but I can’t help but think that a component of safety was to be found in being accepted by her father. A certain level of stability or protection certainly comes along with having a strong, central family.

“She also learned from the books ‘the manner of the fits of Mr. Throckmorton’s children’ and set about about imitating them.  It has long been suspected that trial pamphlets and and similar literature helped spread ideas on witchcraft, but such striking evidence of so direct a connection between a printed account of one case and what happened in another is very rare.” (8)

It’s very easy to forget, especially in a day and age in which one can simply type “witchcraft” and be met by literally millions of documents within a matter of seconds, the scarcity of and also the engagement with which a person would’ve approached any given document at the time.  Today, even just sitting back and idly skipping through things, we go through hundreds of pages of reading every week.  For Anne and her family, however, a gifted copy of a book on witchcraft might well have been the only new piece of literature for quote some time with which to meet the boredom of daily life, as well as, as we’ve seen, its necessities.  It’s so fascinating to see the massive changes that come from such seemingly trivial dispersals of information.  Before the printing press, there would have been a massive rift between the secretive and esoteric knowledge of witchcraft kept by figures of authority and the simple, folk and word of mouth-based conceptions a commoner would have held.  As we see important, high-sphere tales and events such as trial transcriptions and histories being dispersed to more and more people, there is as well present a real shifting of power.  Anne, her father, and the the Kirfootes are able to take their supposed witchcraft case all the way to the king.  In a way, this expresses the opportunity that information brings, and its equalizing effect to a certain degree.  Anne and Brian Gunter, in a strange and roundabout enough way, really learned an entirely new trade with they new knowledge: that of witchcraft exploitation.  The information bestowed upon them by these however limited sources granted them a social, economic, and even political power almost unheard of hitherto.

“indeed, the realization that she was coming to the end of a period of lengthy stress must have been a cathartic one.”

This struck me because despite this sentence because despite it being near the beginning of the book, it foreshadows how much Anne is going to go through. I thought of this throughout my time reading the book, and would often think back to how relieved she might be at any time just to have the whole lengthy process she was going through end at any time, for better or for worse.

“James, coming into his new and more sophisticated kingdom, has been regarded as a politically inept, while his attachment to notions of divine right monarchy has been derided by historians and teachers raised with the traditional view of English constitutional history.”

The quote relates to an over arching theme in the class of the British believing they are often more sophisticated than their Ireland and Scotland counterparts. While the quote may not be specifically about the book. It does raise the discussions that have been mentioned in class about the concept of many scholars shaping the British history with a bias. The quote was specifically intriguing due to Sharpe use of sophisticated kingdom when describing Britain.

The second way the quote relates to the class is the tracing of James’s belief that the monarch can to no wrong. Sharpe pushes the concept forward of the the James’s strong belief in divine rule, which ultimately causes his death.

“Yet with Brian Gunter we are dealing with a man who obviously had a reputation for being contentious, who had committed a homicidal assault in his fifties, and who could plausibly be accused of leading a couple of riotous assaults as an octogenarian. Anne’s statement to the Star Chamber suggests the pressures that came from having such a man as this as her father.” (p.37)

I think it’s important to focus on the fact that Brian Gunter was a man who had done terrible things and had a great temper when looking at Anne’s compliance with the ruse relating to her status as a ‘witch’. Anne may have been a 20-something woman at the time but that still doesn’t negate the fact that Brian Gunter was a man who got his way and did bad things to do the people who wronged him. He was not a man you wanted to dislike you, even more so if you were basically shackled to him as most women would be until they could find a spouse.

“But what must have helped most was the fact that Anne was an interrogator’s dream, a freely confessing suspect.”(p.3)

This quote really caught my eye as I was reading this book especially the fact that Anne was described as “an interrogator’s dream.” It’s odd to describe someone like that but for this situation, Anne really was “an interrogator’s dream.” There were no lawyers to represent for her which makes her responsible for her own words within a stressful environment. At that view, it does make sense no matter how odd it is.

“Physical brutality was added to psychological pressure. Her father beat her several times when she refused to simulate fits” (11)

Anne’s entire situation is incredibly disturbing, but especially the trauma she faced at the hands of her father is particularly shocking. The evidence in this quote of the physical violence and mental anguish she underwent reveal how Anne, though not actually bewitched, was grossly impacted by another form of devilish torture: abuse. Constantly feeling like she needed to perform something, alongside the actual pain her body had to respond to, undoubtedly placed a massive strain on Anne, one that impacted her thought process and view of herself immensely. Anne’s father is a sickening character and it is appalling how he could act in such a way to his daughter.