THE ESSEX SOCIETY FOR ARCHAEOLOGY & HISTORY
206
and Michaela Valente, ‘Weyer, Johann (1515–1588)’, in
Richrad M. Golden, ed.,
Encyclopedia of Witchcraft
(4
vols., Santa Barbara, Denver and Oxford, 2006), vol. 4, pp.
1016–18,
and pp. 1193–6.
77
For examples of annotation, see the Plume Library copy of
Ioannis VVieri,
De Praestigiis Daemonvm
(
Basel, 1568),
pp. 16–17, 20, 128–31, 550.
78
Scot appears in the Plume Library
List of items missing
,
no. 588. The Library Trustees replaced the original in 1965
with a 1930 facsimile edition of Scot’s work.
79
For Scot’s criticism of the Witch of Endor story, see
Reginald Scot,
The Discoverie of Witchcraft
(1584),
Book
VII.
80
The Boy of Bilson or A True Discovery of the late
Notorious Impostures of certain Romish priests in their
pretended Exorcisme, or expulsion of the Diuell out of
a young Boy, named William Perry, sonne of Thomas
Perry of Bilson, in the County of Stafford, Yeoman
,
by
Richard Baddeley (1622); listed in Deed,
Catalogue
,
p. 10
.
81
For discussion of the Bilson case, see Notestein,
History of
Witchcraft
,
pp. 140–2.
82
On the possession controversy, see ibid., pp. 73–92; Barbara
Rosen, ed.,
Witchcraft in England, 1558–1618
(1969;
paperback edn, Amherst, 1991), pp. 227–31, 298–302;
Marion Gibson,
Possession, Puritanism and Print:
Darrell, Harsnett, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan
exorcism controversy
(
London, Pickering and Chatto,
2006).
83
A Breife Narration of the possession, dispossession
and repossession of William Sommers and of some
proceedings against Mr John Dorrell preacher, with
aunsweres to such objections as are made to prove the
pretended counterfeiting of the said Sommers
(1598);
listed in Deed,
Catalogue
,
p. 162.
84
The Replie of Iohn Darrell, to the answer of Iohn
Deacon, and Iohn Walker, concerning the doctrine of
the Possession and Dispossession of Demoniakes
(1602);
listed in Deed,
Catalogue
,
p. 49.
85
See earlier discussion and footnotes 9, 11, 12.
86
Clark, ‘Notebook’, pp. 23–4.
87
Baddeley,
Boy of Bilson
,
p. 62.
88
Ibid., p. 63.
89
Ibid., p. 64.
90
A similar criticism was made of Matthew Hopkins: he
defended himself in 1647 against the allegations that he
was only able to identify so many witches because he was a
witch himself, or because the devil had given him a book
containing all the witches’ names, see Hopkins,
Discovery
,
Queries 1 and 2.
91
See endnote 28.
92
Gaskill points out that More was undecided about the guilt
of Goodwife Kendall, the woman executed for witchcraft
in Cambridge in 1646 whom More had visited in gaol, see
Gaskill,
Witchfinders
,
p. 195. This shows that an individual
could believe in the general possibility of witchcraft while
being sceptical about guilt, or the possibility of even
establishing guilt, in specific cases of alleged witchcraft.
93
Henry More,
An Antidote Against Atheisme, or An Appeal to
the Natural Faculties of the Mind of Man, whether there
be not a God
(1653;
second edn, 1655). Deed lists only the
1653
edition, see Deed,
Catalogue
,
p. 120. More referred
to his dealings with Goodwife Kendall (although calling
her Lendall), see
Antidote
,
pp. 128–130. Gaskill suggests
that this is a mistake, as there were no Lendalls recorded in
any Cambridge parish registers for this period, see Gaskill,
Witchfinders
,
p. 316, note 15. More also referred to another
case from the East Anglian witch hunts in
Antidote
:
that
of John Winnick of Molesworth in Huntingdonshire from
1646,
see More,
Antidote
,
pp. 125–6.
94
Deed,
Catalogue
,
p. 16.
95
Joseph Glanvill,
A Blow at Modern Sadducism in some
Philosophical Considerations about Witchcraft
(1668),
and
Saducismus Triumphatus: or, Full and Plain
Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions
(1681).
The 1668 text went missing from the original Plume
collection at some point (see the Plume Library
List of
items missing
,
no. 268); it was replaced by the Library
Trustees in 1996. The 1681 text is listed in Deed,
Catalogue
,
p. 74. Another text in the same vein is Thomas Bromhall’s
A Treatise of Specters…whereunto is annexed A Learned
TREATISE, confuting the Opinions of the SADDUCES and
EPICURES…
(1659),
see Deed,
Catalogue
,
p. 26.
96
Jonathan Barry, ‘Glanvill, Joseph (1636–1680)’, in Richard
M. Golden, ed.,
Encyclopedia of Witchcraft
(4
vols., Santa
Barbara, Denver and Oxford, 2006), vol. 2, pp. 445–6.
97
Ibid.
98
See Deed,
Catalogue
,
p. 120. A fifteenth text by More,
Philosophicall poems
(
Cambridge, 1647) has gone
missing from the collection, see the Plume Library
List of
items missing
,
no. 456. Gaskill notes that it contains one
poem about a witches’ sabbat, see
Witchfinders
,
p. 195.
99
Deed,
Catalogue
,
p. 47.
100
See Brian Levack’s point that any analysis of the decline in
English witch-hunting should begin with the scepticism
of Harsnett and Bancroft in relation to the exorcism
controversy of the late 16
th
/
early 17
th
century, in Gijswijt-
Hofstra
et al.
(
eds),
Athlone History of Witchcraft and
Magic
(
Vol. 5), pp. 54–5.