active 1612-1618 Thomas Potts

Working as an English law clerk in the early 17th century, Thomas Potts is known chiefly as the author of The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster (1613). He served as clerk to the Lancaster assizes and was instructed by the judges Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley to write up the proceedings of the 1612 Lancashire witch trials.

That book became the central contemporary source for what are now often called the Pendle witch trials. Because Potts wrote close to the events and from an official legal position, his account has remained important to historians, even though it also reflects the beliefs, politics, and courtroom culture of Jacobean England.

Very little else about his life is securely known. He appears in records as active in the 1610s, and his reputation today rests almost entirely on this single work, which endures as both a gripping historical document and a revealing example of how witchcraft was presented to readers in his time.