Thomas Potts

Thomas Potts was an English law clerk, and the author of The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster.

Life Thomas Potts was brought up under the care of Sir Thomas Knyvet, Lord Knyvet of Escrick. He adopted the legal profession, and resided from 1609 in Clifford’s Inn, an Inn of Chancery situated between Chancery Lane and Fetter Lane. In 1612 he went as clerk on circuit with Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley, barons of the exchequer, and officiated at the trial of the famous Lancashire witches at Lancaster on 12 August. He died in 1616.

Work

During the trial of the witches, at the judges' request he compiled an account of the proceedings, which Bromley corrected before publication. It appeared in the following year under the title The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, London, 1613, 4to. and again by the Chetham Society in 1845, with an introduction by James Crossley. Scott refers to it in his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, and it furnished the groundwork of Harrison Ainsworth's Lancashire Witches, in which Potts is a prominent character.