Nov 6, 2024
The wife of Gilbert Wright, Master of the Salters' Company in 1624, frequently consulted cunning men in order to find out whether she would outlive her husband, and there is some evidence to suggest that this was a common type of inquiry. In many cases it seems that the wish was father to the thought, and that the question directly reflected the tensions of an unhappy marriage. Thus when Dr Suckling's wife visited Mary Woods, the Norwich palmist, in 1613, to find out when her husband would die, she followed up her inquiry by offering the wise woman money if she would poison him.
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic