Dr Alison Rowlands, Senior Lecturer in European History and Head of the Department of History at the University of Essex, gave the 2010 Plume Lecture on ‘Witchcraft and Witchcraft Beliefs in England during the Lifetime of Thomas Plume, 1630-1704’. The following article is based on her lecture, and was published in Essex Archaeology and History, volume 2 (4th series), 2011, pp 196-206; it is reproduced here by kind permission of the Essex Society for Archaeology and History.