Children of Wrath: Possession, Prophecy and the Young in Early Modern England

Anna French

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317167761
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

The spiritual status of the early modern child was often confused and uncertain, and yet in the wake of the English Reformation became an issue of urgent interest. This book explores questions surrounding early modern childhood, focusing especially on some of the extreme religious experiences in which children are documented: those of demonic possession and godly prophecy. Dr French argues that despite the fact that these occurrences were not typical childhood experiences, they provide us with a window through which to glimpse the world of early modern children. The work introduces its readers to the dualistic nature of early modern perceptions of their young - they were seen to be both close to devilish temptations and to God's divine finger, as illustrated by published accounts of possession and prophecy. These cases reveal to us moments in which children could be granted authority or in which writers and publishers framed children in positions of spiritual agency. This can tell us much about how early modern society perceived, imagined and depicted their young, and helps us to revise the notion that early modern children's lives, which were often fleeting, may have gone unregarded. Both contributing to, and informed by, some of the most recent historiographical directions taken by early modern history, this book engages with three key areas: the history of extreme spiritual experience such as demonic possession, the 'lived experience' of early modern religion and the history of childhood. In this way, it offers the first scholarly exploration of the dialogue between these three areas of current and widespread historical interest which have, perhaps surprisingly, not yet been considered together.

Chapter 1
Children of Wrath: An Introduction

Early modern children were not strangers to the diabolic. According to a pamphlet originally published in 1573, the young Alexander Nyndge once described to concerned onlookers how the Devil had appeared to him. He looked, said Edward Nyndge, the boy’s brother and author of the pamphlet documenting the case, like ‘the figure of a great red or fiery Dragon’; he and his legions were the ‘Infernall Angels’; he was the ‘Prince of Darknes’ and an ‘old Serpent’, a mortal enemy ‘which keepeth his Castle’.¹ According to the tract, the young Alexander engaged in conversation with this fiend, during which he became the mouthpiece of the spirit, thus speaking in a ‘base sounding and hollow voice’, whilst announcing that the invading demon had come for his soul.² In another similar case, Rachell Pynder, who later confessed to having feigned her demonic possession, was asked what Satan had looked like when he appeared to her. She answered that he resembled a ‘man with a gray bearde, sometime lyke five Cattes, sometimes to Ravens and Crowes’.³ Yet another child, Thomas Darling, also provided colourful descriptions of his encounters with the enemy, who in turn appeared to Darling in the form of ‘greene Angels in the window’ and as a green cat with eyes of fire.⁴

Such descriptions of the Devil were far from unusual in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but what is interesting about these testimonies is that, according to the publications which contained them, and, one would presume, as far as their readers were concerned, these detailed descriptions were coming from the mouths of child witnesses. Their experience was not limited to the Devil’s wiles, however. Children could also, although in English culture admittedly less commonly, bear witness to godly appearances, or at least godly messages. These episodes, too, were reported in print. One tale printed in 1614, for instance, tells of how a 14-year-old girl returned from the dead, to describe visions of angels ‘shining like the beames of the sun’, and an old, grey-bearded man who guided her.⁵

The children of the early modern period have been long regarded as the socially silent. This youthful social demographic was a group which made up the majority of people living in early modern Europe (this despite the high infant and child death rate); perhaps unsurprisingly, then, it was a group which attracted a large amount of attention, both from those whose reforming zeal saw children as the future of Reformed Christendom, and those who saw them as a threat to good social order. Children did not, generally, write down their thoughts (and if they did, they did so usually as adult diary writers looking back on their early years). They did not generally have the authority to shape the worlds around them – they were the taught, the moulded, the disciplined and the silenced. Indeed, as we will consider in this introductory chapter, historians of the early modern period more widely, and early modern childhood more specifically, have tended in turn to accept this belief in the voiceless and often highly indecipherable nature of childhood during this period. These little people slip through our fingers in texts, pamphlets, religious treatises and plays; they are out of reach, nearly impossible for us to grasp. When children were written about in these forms of literature, it was from the perspective of adults and it is therefore extremely difficult for us to access or understand the ‘real’ experience of childhood – if, indeed, early modern perceptions of childhood allow us to use this word usefully at all.

As with all silences in history, however, a relative absence does not mean that children were not significant within early modern culture, that they were not thought about, or that they did not occupy the minds or imaginations of the communities within which they lived. It is by examining these reflections of the child in the glass of what source material does survive that we can begin to intuit the shapes of this significance. This book, then, is very much one about the early modern imagination, and the cultural spaces given to beliefs about and perceptions of early modern children. These cultural spaces might seem lurid or unusual; they might, as in the case of Nyndge, Pynder or Darling, involve experiences which post-modern readers of the sources find improbable, if not entirely impossible; yet the imaginings of early modern society can tell us a great deal about the children they encompassed. Indeed, as its title suggests, this book will explore the role of children both in cases of demonic possession and godly prophecy, and will use these superficially conflicting stories, these contemporary reports of extreme experience, to answer a set of questions about precisely which cultural spaces were afforded to children: the ways in which they could be imagined, the positions of authority they could, in these cases, seem to fulfil, and the reactions or recriminations to which they might be subject. Also, and most interestingly, the cases of possessed and prophetic children reveal to us a central idea, or problematic paradox, which existed at the heart of early modern beliefs about children: the notion that they were at one and the same time believed to have the simultaneous potential to be close both to God and to the Devil. By looking at such sources, what may have been seen as unusual and unrepresentative episodes of childhood experience can become a window through which we can glimpse a rather broader anxiety about early modern childhood. In these cases, it is possible to perceive that early modern children were seen to be both innocent, through their lack of carnal sin and real understanding of adult temptation, but also sinful, due to their associated inability to yet comprehend, to understand or to know God. The change and uncertainty surrounding child salvation in Reformation and post-Reformation culture laid this tension bare, and it sat awkwardly at the heart of the child’s experience of early modern religion and culture, and, in turn, was reflected in early modern society’s interactions with and approaches to the young. This work will, then, consider the reasons for, and reactions to, this difficult, dualistic and paradoxical spiritual status – and in so doing, it is hoped, illuminate at least a little of that reputedly invisible figure, the early modern child.

Key Arguments

As the opening of this introductory chapter illustrates, the spiritual status of the early modern child was often confused and uncertain, and yet in the wake of the English Reformation it became an issue of urgent interest. In order to understand why, we must first explore questions surrounding early modern childhood. In the following chapters, the monograph will move on to consider the ‘ideal’ modes of childhood behaviour which were established in various advice books and manuals, and subsequently explore some of the extreme religious experiences in which children were documented: those of demonic possession and godly prophecy. As might be suggested by anyone critical of the relevance or continued study of, for example, the events surrounding the by now well-documented European witchtrials, we cannot assume too much, make too many generalisations about, or extrapolate too readily from, the ‘extreme’ events or aberrations of history. Indeed, the involvement of children in cases of demonic possession and godly prophecy were not typical childhood experiences, and do not form the majority of such cases. Nevertheless, they still undoubtedly provide us with a window through which to glimpse the world of early modern children, if not directly then reflected in the interpretations of the adult authors who recorded them. These cases reveal to us events in which children could gain or be granted some form of authority, and in which writers and publishers framed children in positions of spiritual agency. Through these events and writings we can see the troubled, dualistic nature of early modern perceptions of the young – who were, it emerges, seen to be vexingly close both to devilish temptations and to God’s divine finger.

As with any aspects of childhood in the early modern period (or indeed, the pre-modern world in general), it is generally not possible fully to recreate or to understand what the experience of early modern childhood, or the early modern child, might have been. We ‘witness’ the words of children, indeed any dialogue with the figure of the child or any piece of information about their education or entertainment, through the writings and observations of adult authors – or, alternatively, through the diaries of adults reflecting in hindsight on their younger selves. Hence, our writings about children in the past will inevitably weave together sources which document children’s experiences as told by adults – or even simple perceptions of children, again as recorded by adults. Nevertheless, these sources are still useful to us as historians seeking an interaction with the early modern child. Through the works to be considered in this book, we can begin to understand and unpick perceptions, stories and even imaginings of the cultural spaces in which ideas about childhood could exist, circulate and gain currency. As the historian and literary critic Marina Warner has written, the imaginary, the extreme, the exaggerated and even the fictional can reveal much about a society and its beliefs, its fears and aspirations.⁶ So, then, we can approach with care but also confidence those cases of children in witchcraft and possession cases in which they are depicted, as we will see, as the innocent victims of a dark and magical evil. Equally, we can also usefully consider the children who were written about as child prophets – close to God, visitors of celestial destinations and communicators of godly messages. Each of these models represents cultural understandings of the positions and roles children could fulfil, and they therefore have much to tell us about early modern childhood, both in terms of the perceptions that revolved around children, but also the experiences of the children themselves. Perception is not wholly separate from experience – each can shape the other, both in the past and now. The ideas and constructions present in these texts, however unusual they may appear at first glance, are in fact more broadly applicable, and more generally relevant, than they might at first seem. Indeed, a child does not have to a be a godly prophet themselves in order to live in a society which reserves that potential place for them; they do not have to be possessed in order to experience a culture, or to help shape a culture, which expresses and guards against just that sort of anxiety.

This book will, then, in these ways consider some of the perceptions, roles and experiences to which children were subject in Reformation and post-Reformation England. This was a period in which the world people had grown used to was being torn apart and challenged in a range of ways and at a number of levels, and in which the very nature of what it meant to be a family was changed forever. Furthermore, and more particular to our purpose here, Protestant Reformers fundamentally altered perceptions of childhood, breaking with Catholic tradition through their reforms of the baptism ceremony. Reactions to the Church’s attempts to reform baptism ranged from grief over the loss of the reassuring exorcism ritual to Puritan anger over the fact that the mainstream ceremony still included rituals they considered to be superstitious, such as making the sign of the cross over infants. Either way, the status of baptism and the spiritual status of children were now cast into doubt. No longer assured of their salvation or of the efficacy of baptism, Protestant children were viewed as sites of unusual and intense contention: they were seen as both frighteningly vulnerable to the Devil and also as potential vessels for heavenly and prophetic messages. These dualistic depictions of children will be the core focus of the book, and they were a direct result of the uncertainties unleashed by the theological ructions of the Protestant Reformation.

The difficulty experienced by early modern people in comprehending their world has stretched well into the twenty-first century. Beliefs in demonic possession and witchcraft, for example, have confounded and challenged historians for decades. Possession has attracted some recent attention from historians, but few have yet considered in detail why so many victims of demonic possession were young. This book will argue that part of the reason was the changing nature of beliefs about the spiritual status of children, and their consequent vulnerability to the Devil and malign spiritual forces. Beliefs about children – their vulnerability, their ability as ‘innocents’ to reflect and contain divine and demonic conflict in ways adults could not – contributed significantly to the manner in which these cases unravelled. Through their battles with the Devil, as reported in the literature covering their cases, young demoniacs, with the help of adult bystanders and ‘exorcists’, helped to orchestrate their spiritual delivery and were thus presented as advocates for their faith. This fact, which saw these children become embroiled in several religious battles – often between Catholic and Puritan attempts to exorcise demons and thus to depict themselves as the ‘true’ faith – will be a topic explored both through a reassessment of the accounts themselves, and through a consideration of the tangled saga of John Darrell, Samuel Harsnett and the child demoniacs. Harsnett and Darrell engaged in a series of tract wars in the late sixteenth century, in which Harsnett, a controversial figure within the Church of England, accused Darrell of conducting a series of exorcisms ‘in the fashion of vagabond players, that coast from Towne to Towne’ with their ‘pageant of Puppits’.

Much can be gained by contrasting these beliefs with the traditions surrounding what might at first glance seem to be the polar opposite to instances of demonic intrusion: those of child prophecy. In early modern culture, children were one of the most likely social groups to see prophetic visions or to speak godly prophecy. This book will argue that these cases are, in fact, very similar to the instances of demonic possession. Prophecy cases can reveal to us further ways in which children could, whether unconsciously or otherwise, ‘perform’ widely understood and culturally recognised forms of behaviour. Indeed, whether or not children were seen to be possessed or prophetic depended on their audience and the context in which their behaviour was interpreted. As contemporaries often reminded themselves, the Devil may indeed appear as an angel of light. The roles of children in such cases were tightly bound with ideas surrounding divine agency and retribution, with God using chosen children for instance to solve crimes or to bring justice upon those who had done wrong. Likewise, the documented ‘monstrous births’ of the period – instances of deformed infants born to uncomprehending mothers and communities – were interpreted alternately as signs of God’s judgement or His wrath, casting children as the physical symbol of divine will on earth. Such cases and publications provide us with further evidence of the ways in which early modern society grappled with the difficulties and ambiguities surrounding child salvation (which can be seen to be part of the much wider spiritual anxiety of the period). These new ideas were framed and contextualised within more familiar and traditional tropes and beliefs, such as those which saw God as visibly active in the world, and then used to provide comfort and assurance, or simply as a form of spiritual explanation or edification.

In the spiritual imagination of the period, then, children were both close to God and adjacent to the Devil, and their role was indeed a confused and contradictory one, tangled up with Protestant and traditional complications alike. Nevertheless, in acting out the behaviours prescribed for and associated with this contradictory status, children were not necessarily the ‘socially silent’. Even in their reported experiences and second-hand depictions, as presented to us in these cases of extreme religious occurrences, children are revealed to us as individuals who could gain or be granted the forms of spiritual authority which were required to orchestrate their delivery from demons or, alternatively, to utter godly prophecy. These texts show children to be acting with, and to be accepted as having, a form of soteriological agency, or at least soteriological assurance. These actions, and the activity permitted in this particular cultural space, helped imply to early modern spectators and audiences that a particular child’s salvation, and by extension the potential for any child’s salvation, was secure. In turn, this reveals to us a religious culture which reduced the efficacy of baptism, thus muddying and confusing the spiritual status of children. Yet it was also a culture which found alternative ways to assure themselves of the spiritual safety of their children – because it cared deeply, or understood that the faithful cared deeply, about the fate of its children’s souls.

Relevant Historiographies

It is perhaps this question of the care adults did or did not feel for their chi...