Resumen de Tanglost of Wales: magic an adultery in the Court of Chancery circa 1500
Around 1500 Bishop John Morgan of St. David�s diocese in Wales submitted a bill to court of Chancery accusing a Welsh woman named Tanglost of attempting to murder him by image magic and as the adulterous lover of Thomas Wyrriot, a gentleman of Pembrokeshire, whose wife Tanglost had likely murdered. This essay examines how Tanglost�s case illuminates the intersection of three significant tensions in late medieval Britain. First was the growing fear of women�s magic as a weapon aimed against the state and church; the second resulted from clerical efforts to enforce the canon law of marriage, especially in Wales where tradition allowed a wider range of sexual partnerships. The third stemmed from Henry VII�s efforts to secure Wales, where resistance to his rule remained. Opposition to Morgan, Henry�s appointee, looked suspiciously like opposition to Tudor rule. Far more than an indictment of a village witch, Tanglost�s case reveals powerful political and social currents of the early Tudor era.
