Witchcraft

1600 · ref. ST21089 — England: Printed by the English secret press 1600. FIRST EDITION. 187 x 128 mm. 7 3/8 x 5". 4 p.l. 24 106 2 pp. Very pleasing early 20th century grained calf gilt covers with French fillet border and rosette cornerpieces raised bands spine panels with small daisy centerpiece gilt lettering densely gilt turn-ins marbled endpapers all edges gilt. STC 6288; ESTC S109297. See also Freeman "Demons Deviance and Defiance: John Darrell and the Politics of Exorcism in Late Elizabethan England" in Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church c. 1560-1660 ed. P. Lake and M. Questier Boydell Press 2000 pp. 34-63. Short faint scratch to front board extremities lightly rubbed text washed and pressed title and final two leaves somewhat grayed and grubby margins trimmed a bit close occasionally grazing headlines or shoulder notes but a perfectly readable copy in an attractive binding. This scarce clandestine imprint is a central publication in of one of the strangest religio-political controversies of the turn of the 17th century involving demonic possession witchcraft accusations and an anti-Puritan crusade by a Church of England bishop. Our author Puritan exorcist John Darrell ca. 1562 - ca. 1607 was educated at Cambridge and briefly dabbled in law and farming before establishing himself as a preacher and spiritual healer. In 1586 he began conducting exorcisms resulting in a level of local fame partly because some of them resulted in the convictions of witches. In the following decade he achieved national notoriety. First in March of 1597 he exorcised a group of seven demoniacs in the household of Lancashire landowner Nicholas Starkey. Then in November of the same year he conducted a dramatic public exorcism of Nottingham apprentice musician William Somers whose claim of having been magically possessed led to the arrest of 13 people on witchcraft charges. One of these individuals was the sister of a city alderman who immediately took action to protect his kinswoman. The resulting legal tangle--which included the arrest of Somers on charges of witchcraft later changed to fraud and an investigative commission led by the Archbishop of York--attracted widespread attention to Darrell's activities by both supporters and detractors. The Church of England was highly concerned about Puritan exorcisms: in the words of historian Thomas S. Freeman "exorcism magnified those aspects of Puritan worship which the ecclesiastical authorities most feared--its anti-hierarchical tendencies its strong sense of communal solidarity and its potential as a vehicle for protest." No doubt with an understanding of this threat Bishop of London Richard Bancroft and his chaplain Samuel Harsnett led a vicious campaign against Darrell publishing multiple works smearing his character and theology stripping Durrell of his license to preach and imprisoning him for more than a year. Darrell did not go quietly. Over the next four years he and his supporters penned multiple defenses of his actions and of Puritan exorcism more generally published either abroad or illegally by secret English presses. The present work is significant not only for its detailed retelling of Darrell's final two exorcisms in his own words but also because it includes Darrell's detailed "doctrine of possession" which discusses the difference between his exorcisms and those of the apostolic age an important theological clarification in the debate. STC indicates that our book was one of the works published clandestinely in England; this is backed up by the October 29 1600 Stationers' Company order to burn all copies of "mr Darrell's book lately printed concerning the casting out of Devilles" which Freeman asserts refers to the present publication. This order to be burned on top of the clandestine publication could explain the present scarcity of the work which appears on the market very infrequently. We have been able to trace just a single copy at auction this century and only five since 1964 several lacking the final errata leaf which does appear here. Printed [by the English secret press?] unknown