This entry defines evidence in early modern English law as the informing of the jury to enable them to decide a ‘matter of fact’, which in turn is defined as an issue, or an alleged act, the precise nature of which is in dispute. It considers the well-attested yet elusive transformation of the jury’s role from neighbour-witnesses to evaluators of evidence, noting the contrast between English and Continental procedures. It sketches out the double effects of an emergent legal culture of lay evidence-evaluation alongside the grammar school promulgation of literary techniques to produce enargeia /evidentia (vividness) through artificial proof, circumstances and indicia or signs. Finally, it indicates how dramatists adapted the techniques of Roman forensic rhetoric’s evidentia, inviting audiences to collaborate in the production of theatre’s psychological, local and temporal verisimilitude.
