What did Thomas Plume think about witchcraft?
203
no surprise that Plume – at least as far as the contents of the
Plume Library suggest – sided with other Anglican clerics
who argued against atheism. The Plume Library contains
two copies of More’s
Antidote Against Atheisme
(
the original
1653,
and an extended 1655, edition), in which More referred
to his questioning of the accused witch Goodwife Kendall
in Cambridge in 1646.
93
The Library also includes
The Folly
and Unreasonableness of Atheism
,
published in 1699 by
the royal chaplain Richard Bentley;
94
and two influential
texts by More’s protégée, Joseph Glanvill, who was also a royal
chaplain and Member of the Royal Society. These two texts
were
A Blow at Modern Sadducism
,
published in 1668, and
the 1681 best-seller
Saducismus Triumphatus
,
published
after Glanvill’s death in 1680 by More,
95
whose influence on
the text was such that modern commentators suggest that they
should be seen as joint authors.
96
Re-issued regularly in revised
editions until 1726,
Saducismus Triumphatus
was one of the
most important anti-atheism publications in late-seventeenth-
century England.
97
Plume seems to have been generally
sympathetic to the Cambridge Platonist school of thought of
which More and Glanvill were leading representatives. The
Plume Library contains fourteen other works by More
98
and
also
The True Intellectual System of the Universe
,
published
in 1678 by another leading Cambridge Platonist, Ralph
Cudworth (although Plume may also have been inclined to
buy such texts because of the importance to him of the Christ’s
‘
old boy network’: he had been at the college at the same time
as More, and Cudworth became Master of Christ’s in 1654).
99
The writings of late-seventeenth-century sceptics who were
beginning to deny the possibility of witchcraft and the devil,
like John Wagstaff’s 1669
The Question of Witchcraft Debated
,
John Webster’s 1677
Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft
,
or
Balthasar Bekker’s 1695
The World Bewitch’d
,
are by contrast
conspicuous by their absence from the Library shelves.
conclusion
A good deal, then, can be inferred about Plume’s views
on witchcraft from a close examination of his Library, his
anecdotes and his life-history. In a stance which echoed
(
either knowingly or otherwise) that of Johann Weyer, Plume
seems generally to have believed that good Christian education
was more appropriate than discipline and punishment in
matters of moral or spiritual error. He emerges as a man who
abhorred persecution (including the persecution of witches)
as a manifestation of the dangerous and distasteful religious
extremism he associated with popular Puritanism and mob
rule, and as someone who laughed at the stupidity of gullible
or uneducated people who allowed themselves to be defrauded
by the tricks of ungodly cunning men. In line with (and thus
perpetuating) the specifically Anglican stance of Harsnett and
Bancroft,
100
Plume was also generally sceptical about cases
of supposed possession, chiefly because he seems to have
deemed them susceptible to unscrupulous manipulation,
particularly by Catholic priests. He never denied the possibility
of genuine supernatural intervention in the world, however,
and was clearly aware of the risks to established religion of
a too radically sceptical position on this issue. His apparent
support for the anti-atheism stance of More and Glanvill, with
its scientific emphasis on the gathering of empirical evidence
by learned men to prove the existence of spirits, is thus neither
surprising nor inconsistent with his general insistence on the
importance of Christian education and learning, provided
such learning was mediated and controlled by erudite men
of the Anglican Church like himself. As was the case in his
overall churchmanship, then, in his views on witchcraft and
the supernatural Plume adopted a moderate position, steering
a careful and deliberate middle course between the Scylla of
dangerous religious zeal and the Charybdis of atheism.
acknowledgements
For their assistance in the writing of this article I would like
to thank the Trustees of the Plume Library, Tony Doe, Erica
Wylie, Patricia Herrmann, Herbert Eiden, James Raven and
Michael Bailey.
Endnotes
1
On Plume’s will, see Robert Anthony Doe, ‘The
churchmanship of Dr Thomas Plume (1630–1704). A
study of a career in the Restoration Church of England’
(
M. A. thesis, Essex University, 2005), pp. 59–73. Plume
did not intend that either the Library or the Professorship
should bear his name, although both acquired it after his
death.
2
On the Library, see Doe, ‘Churchmanship’, pp. 66–9.
3
Here I disagree with Bostridge, who suggests that the
continuity of witchcraft debates after the Restoration
implied that further significant outbreaks of witch-trials
were possible in England, see Ian Bostridge,
Witchcraft
and its Transformations, c. 1650–c. 1750
(
Clarendon
Press, Oxford, 1997).
4
Robin Briggs, ‘“Many reasons why”: witchcraft and the
problem of multiple explanations’, in Jonathan Barry
et
al.
(
eds),
Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Studies
in Culture and Belief
(
Cambridge University Press,
1996),
pp. 49–63, especially p. 55; Erik Midelfort, ‘Witch
Craze? Beyond the Legends of Panic’,
Magic, Ritual, and
Witchcraft
, 6:1 (
Summer 2011), pp. 11–33.
5
Doe, ‘Churchmanship’, p. 8.
6
Ibid., pp. 8–10.
7
Ibid., pp. 10–11.
8
Ibid., p. 16.
9
Plume MS. 31 (held in the Plume Library, Maldon),
unpaginated, verso sides of final two pages. This poem
may have been written as early as 1645 with MS. 31 being
started as a book of verse and then turned round and
begun again from the other end as an account book. On
MS. 31, see Doe, ‘Churchmanship’, p. 19, and Andrew
Clark, ‘Dr. Plume as a Cambridge undergradaute’,
The
Essex Review
,
XIV (1905), pp. 147–8.
10
Plume graduated B. A. in 1649, see W. J. Petchey,
The
Intentions of Thomas Plume
(
Maldon, 1985; second
edition, Maldon, 2004), p. 7. He then began reading for his
M.A., see Clark, ‘Cambridge undergraduate’, p. 148. MS.
31
makes clear that Plume continued to live in Cambridge
until June 1650.
11
Plume MS. 30 (held in the Plume Library, Maldon).
Its contents are discussed (selectively) by Doe,
‘
Churchmanship’, pp. 20–8, and Andrew Clark, ‘Dr.
Plume’s pocket-book’,
The Essex Review
,
XIV (1905), pp.
9–20, 65–72,
and idem., ‘Dr. Plume’s notebook’,
The Essex
Review
,
XIV (1905), pp. 152–163, 213–20, and XV (1906),
pp. 8–24.