What did Thomas Plume think about witchcraft?
205
45
Plume,
Century of
Sermons, pp. xvi-xvii. Plume here
writes as if from Hacket’s perspective, but one can be fairly
certain that Plume shared Hacket’s views.
46
On Lowes, see Gaskill,
Witchfinders
,
pp. 138–44, 156–61;
C. L’Estrange Ewen,
The Trials of John Lowes, Clerk
(
London, 1937).
47
See endnote 9.
48
Doe, ‘Churchmanship’, p. 36, and Appendix 1. On MS. 7,
see endnote 13.
49
Doe, ‘Churchmanship’, p. 39.
50
Ibid., pp. 41–2.
51
See the earlier discussion of this point, and endnotes
14–18.
52
Doe, ‘Churchmanship’, pp. 43–58.
53
There are also two shorter anecdotes, one referring to the
burning of a woman for witchcraft (see endnote 30) and
another (recorded immediately after the James I anecdote)
as follows: ‘Two Chymists now living in Lond[on] have
p[ro]mised whoever dies first to return to ye other (if
God will p[er]mitt) & reveal w[ha]t learning may be had
fro[m] ye other world’, MS. 30, p. 34.
54
Clark, ‘Notebook’, p. 155.
55
MS. 30, p. 49.
56
Ibid.
57
See Stuart Clark, ‘Protestant demonology: Sin, superstition,
and society (
c
. 1520–
c
. 1630)’,
in Bengt Ankarloo and
Gustav Henningsen, eds.,
Early modern European
witchcraft. Centres and peripheries
(
Oxford, 1993), pp.
45–81.
58
This treatise, published in London in 1636, formed part
of the complete works of John Weemes held in the Plume
Library, see Deed,
Catalogue
,
p. 184. The section on the
magician covered pp. 21–162 (the other three degenerate
sons were the atheist, the idolator and the Jew).
59
William Perkins,
A Discovrse of the Damned Art of
Witchcarft; so farre forth as it is revealed in the
Scriptures, and manifest by true experience
(
Cambridge,
1610).
This is part of a set of the complete works of Perkins
held in the Plume Library, see Deed,
Catalogue
,
p. 133.
60
Ibid. On Perkins, see Clark, ‘Protestant demonology’, pp.
55, 56, 65, 66, 70.
Perkins had been the leading Protestant
theologian of late-sixteenth-century England and a Fellow
of Christ’s College, Cambridge, both of which help explain
why Plume might have sought out his works for purchase.
61
On this point, see Roy Porter, ‘Witchcraft and magic in
Enlightenment, Romantic and Liberal thought’, in M.
Gijswijt-Hofstra, B. P. Levack and R. Porter (eds),
The
Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe:
Vol. 5, The 18
th
and 19
th
Centuries
(
The Athlone Press,
London, 1999), pp. 191–274, quote at p. 241.
62
MS. 30, p. 34. Gaskill, the only historian ever to mention
this anecdote in print, interprets it as evidence that Plume
might have been infected with Henry More’s interest in
witchcraft while an undergraduate at Christ’s, see Gaskill,
Witchfinders
,
p. 195. Gaskill does not discuss the anecdote
in depth or contextualise it, however, nor does he mention
any of the other witchcraft anecdotes from MS. 30 apart
from the one about the condemned witch who asked her
son for a drink of water (see above, endnote 30).
63
See Lawrence Normand and GarethRoberts, eds.,
Witchcraft
in early modern Scotland. James VI’s Demonology and
the North Berwick witches
(
Exeter, 2000), pp. 309–26. The
narrative turning-point is on p. 316. Plume probably knew
of the pamphlet, although it does not appear in the Plume
Library.
64
For the best modern edition of James’s demonology, see
Normand and Roberts,
Witchcraft
,
pp. 353–426. The
Plume Library does have a copy of the
Daemonologie
,
which is discussed later.
65
Such cases are more accurately called cases of ‘indirect
demonic obsession’, because the children’s afflictions
were supposedly initially caused by a witch. James’s
change of thinking was not as inconsistent as it at first
appears: in identifying witches in Scotland in the 1590s
and fraudsters in England in the early seventeenth century
James was giving public expression to his claims to
superior knowledge in matters of religion; the pro-witch-
hunting stance he adopted in Scotland in the early 1590s
was largely based on his genuine anxiety that witchcraft
was being used against the House of Stuart.
66
Wallace Notestein,
A history of witchcraft in England
from 1558–1718
(1911;
second edn, New York, 1968) pp.
137–45.
67
See James Sharpe,
The bewitching of Anne Gunter. A
horrible and true story of football, witchcraft, murder
and the King of England
(
London, 1999).
68
Ibid., pp. 169–96.
69
Ibid., p. 180.
70
MS. 30, p. 35.
71
Ibid.
72
It is impossible to know when Plume acquired the books
and pamphlets that ended up in the Plume Library as he
rarely if ever inserted the date on which he acquired a
text. Both Petchey and Doe imply that Plume first became
an active book-buyer in the service of his mentor John
Hacket. Petchey, for instance, writes that ‘Dr Hacket had
initiated the young scholar [ie: Plume] into the world
of bibliographical scholarship…In the late 1650s he
commenced a life-long acquaintance with the many
booksellers of London’,
Intentions
,
p. 8. However, it is
possible that Plume acquired at least some books before
this date, either through purchase or by being given books
by others, and he would doubtless have read borrowed
texts as a student. We know that he was already an avid
reader by the 1650s, judging by the notes he made in MS.
7 (
see endnote 13). He may even have purchased some
cheaper texts as a student, as Clark notes that he was
‘
comfortably off’ at Cambridge, see Clark, ‘Cambridge
undergraduate’, p. 147. Plume lists the purchase of only
one book as a student (see ibid., p. 148):
Philosophia
Naturalis
by Heinrich Regius. This was listed in the only
quarter for which Plume provided a detailed breakdown of
his expenditure, however, so it is possible that he bought
other books or pamphlets in other quarters but did not list
them.
73
James I,
Opera
(1619),
see Deed,
Catalogue
,
p. 93.
74
Ioannis VVieri,
De Praestigiis Daemonvm
(
Basel, 1568),
see Deed,
Catalogue
,
p. 187.
75
Scot is not listed in Deed,
Catalogue
,
as it went missing
from the original collection (see endnote 78).
76
For summaries of the importance of the works by Weyer
and Scot, see James Sharpe, ‘Scot, Reginald (1583?-1599)’,