1 / Discerning Demonic Possession and Witchcraft-Possession in Early Modern England
In 1584, an anonymous pamphlet entitled A true and most Dreadful discourse of a woman possessed with the Devil described the trials of one Margaret Cooper, who had recently suffered at the hands of the Devil in the shape of a headless bear. Her troubles first presented themselves as idle talk, for which her husband, Stephen Cooper, reproved her and prayed on her behalf. Soon she grew restless and called for her wedding ring and a coin her son had found, prompting her husband to pray âthat it would please God to send her a more quiet spirit, and . . . that faith might speedily vanquish such vanity in her.â1 Instead, Margaret grew increasingly reckless, and began to suffer from fits during which she foamed at the mouth and shook so violently that the bedchamber rattled as her husband and sister sought to restrain her. As her husband and others prayed, she relayed her vision of the headless bear, and another of a snail-like creature. In time the witnesses also saw these spirits and, after Margaret was rolled around and nearly tossed from a window, saw the flames that filled the room with a terrible stench. Finally, her husband and his brother âdid charge the Devil . . . to depart from her and to trouble her no more: then they laid hands on her and cried to the Lord to help them.â Subsequently, Margaret recovered herself and first she and then the company âespied a thing like unto a little child with a very bright shining countenance, casting a great light in the Chamber.â After the child vanished, Margaret asked forgiveness of God and acknowledged that her own sins had brought the evil spirits to her. The narrator reported in the end that she remained in âsome reasonable orderâ from that time forward.2
Whatever âreally happenedâ at Margaret Cooperâs bedside, the published narrative contains a wealth of suggestive information about her preternatural affliction. Demonologists might have considered Cooper obsessed rather than possessed because her symptoms were largely external assaults, but her range of symptoms and the title of the piece demonstrate that her suffering fell within the realm of possession phenomena. Possessions attracted converts and, many believed, presaged the impending day of reckoning, which helps to explain why these cases sparked fundamental disagreements among Protestants and Catholics.3 Despite their relative rarity, printed possession cases reveal the ways authors mobilized discourses, both explicitly and implicitly, to tell stories, sell pamphlets, and aid broader agendas. The Cooper narrativeâs emphasis on sin as an overture from the Devil, and on prayer as the proper response, follows the âscriptâ of the sort of godly Protestant possession narratives that viewed possession phenomena with great seriousness. While commanding the Devil to depart may have smacked of the Catholic ritual of exorcism, its emphasis on prayer and reliance upon Godâs power channeled through a godly community demonstrates that the piece intended to provide moral instruction for Protestant readers.4 Even on its own, therefore, this account of Margaret Cooperâs ordeal is a rich source of early modern perceptions of possession phenomena.
Attempts to determine the meaning of Margaret Cooperâs story are complicated by the fact that it reemerged in 1614, in a pamphlet called A Miracle, of Miracles: As fearful as ever was seen or heard of in the memory of man. The new text retained the vast majority of the original, changing only âthe ninth day of May last past Anno. 1584â to âthe ninth day of September last past.â5 The subject matter stayed the same, but the erasure of the thirty intervening years helped to retain a sense of urgency. Another innovation was that the publisher appended other wonders to the Cooper story, including the story of âa poor country maidâ who apparently died for twenty-four hours, revived, and then spent five days weeping and prophesying until she died a second time. This, plus news of a recent flood that had submerged several villages, marked the 1614 version of Margaret Cooperâs possession as part of a broader genre of literature devoted to the sensational presentation of miraculous wonders.6
Further complicating attempts to pinpoint the meaning of Margaret Cooperâs possession is her appearance a third time, in 1641, as Margaret Hooper. This pamphletâs new title altered the protagonistâs identity and location, claiming to provide Most Fearful and strange News from the Bishopric of Durham, Being a true Relation of one Margaret Hooper. In its first sentence the author established that the events had taken place âUpon the 15 day of November now last past 1641,â and in Durham, where Stephen âHooperâ was the same âyeoman of good and honest reputationâ despite his new name.7 The three lives of Margaret Cooperâs possession narrative, which spanned 1584, 1614, and 1641, demonstrate the staying power of the genre.8 The third iteration also accompanied a broader increase during the turbulent 1640s and 1650s in the number of published pamphlets about witchcraft and related wonders.9 The story persisted because it continued to offer something to readers; it was saleable because it was sensational, and both provocative and permissible because it exhorted the reader to godliness while avoiding some of the more controversial aspects of contested witchcraft-possession cases. These aspects of the Margaret Cooper narrative help to explain how it managed to be many things at once: a sincere godly account of an apparent possession, a snapshot of beliefs about the Devil and the unknown, a tract baldly recycled for profit, and a text that made use of symbolsâsuch as the headless bearâwith which modern readers are largely unfamiliar.10 Taken together, the Cooper narratives illustrate that the language of possession was powerful enough to captivate and flexible enough to serve the occasionally contradictory motives of various authors and narrators.
To encounter one version of Margaret Cooperâs narrative invites reflection upon what the source reveals about possession phenomena in early modern England, whereas to encounter all three versions necessarily destabilizes a historianâs sense of what truths they hold. But however circumspect the reader must be when considering such narrativesâ objective meaning, the fact that they functioned as propaganda does not mean that the authors did not believe in the reality of what they described. In fact their sincerity frequently merged with strategy because, as Stuart Clark has explained, âit was intrinsic to the very notions of possession and exorcism that a contest for power should take place. . . . Propaganda was in this sense not extraneous to possession but one of its very presuppositions.â11 This fusion of possession, propaganda, and power recommends the reading of possession narratives as cultural texts. Given how many possession events were never published or were published but lost, any study of this sort provides less of a complete record than snapshots of early modern mentalities. Taken together, the Margaret Cooper narratives may destabilize our certainty about what happened at the bedsides of those who acted as if they were possessed, but they also highlight the ways possession cases reflected discourses of good and evil, revealed contests over social legitimacy, and posed critical questions about who had authority to pronounce judgment upon their meaning.
Possession Symptoms and Scripts
By the time Margaret Cooperâs narrative first appeared in 1584, there was already a long history of publications that described strange and wondrous occurrences. Published possession cases, whether they invoked witchcraft or not, played an important role in shaping the cultural conversation about the nature of wonders and miraclesâboth by spreading popular conceptions of the preternatural realm and by affecting the reception such cases received from ministers and magistrates. Demonic possession cases, and those that blurred the boundaries between demonic possession, witchcraft-possession, and obsession, shared a broad set of symptoms that reflected long-held beliefs about the malice of the Devil and his desire to seduce souls away from God. These symptoms evolved over time into cultural scripts that were disseminated in published narratives, so that observers accepted or rejected demoniacsâ behavior based upon their understanding of the proper parameters of spectral interference. It was possessionâs communal and performative nature that explains both its power and limitations as published propaganda.12 Possessions were communal because, despite the immediate and primary focus upon the demoniac, a possession only became a possession as a result of observation and interpretation. The same strategies that helped authors make their caseâparadoxically, describing extraordinary wonders and yet adhering to a familiar scriptâopened possession narratives to criticism from those who mistrusted the caseâs political and religious implications. Because possessions were mutually constituted by demoniacs and observers, participants struggled over the power to fix the meaning of what had taken place.
To perform a recognizable possession, demoniacs drew upon a set of symptoms based upon scriptural and European precedents but that reflected evolving English and Protestant particularities. While some of these symptoms might initially seem like little more than antics, phenomena such as embodied sensation, perception, and movement played essential roles in the cultural recognition of possession. As Stuart Clark notes, the need to transform movement into meaning was âan especially vital matter in an area like possession where so much that was constitutive both of the experience of being possessed and of the ability to interpret that experience was obviously gestural.â13 Among these symptoms, the most common were painful convulsive fits and contortions. When Alexander Nyndge became possessed in 1573, for example, his brother Edward described the convulsions of Alexanderâs face and body, and the incredible ways that his chest swelled, his eyes stared, and his back bent inward toward his belly.14 The minister George More, who described the symptoms exhibited by the seven Starkie children in the 1590s, explained that the spirits âdid rent, and tear the possessed, insomuch that they were sorer vexed and tormentedâ by pinching and pricking.15 At other times what should have resulted in great pain did not, as when the young John Smith, whose witchcraft-possession took place in 1616, exhibited preternatural strength and violence by striking âhimself such blows on his breast . . . that you might hear the sound of it the length of a long chamber . . . the least of them was able to strike down a strong man. And yet did to himself no hurt.â16 When acting as if they were possessed, demoniacs startled observers with a range of physical manifestations of their spiritual torment, frequently exhibiting such rapid transitions between contradictory behaviors that few could imagine how their affliction could be natural.
Demoniacsâ convulsive fits frequently incorporated a range of related symptoms such as unusual strength, alternating rigidity and flexibility, and trances that authors consistently described as wholly beyond the power of the demoniac to fake. In 1574, seventeen-year-old Mildred Norrington was so strong when her spirit took hold of her that âfour men could scarce keep her down.â17 Similarly, those who observed Joan Jordenâs symptoms remarked that she had to be bound in a chair for restraint, but âshe (or rather the Devil in her) struggled and strained so sore, that it broke in pieces. Being again bound in the chair, six strong men leaned with their whole strength thereon, each also setting one foot on the round of the chair to keep it down. But she, (though so bound) notwithstanding all their strength, removed the chair round about the house, a yard at a time, they hanging thereon.â18 In 1601, the twelve-year-old demoniac Thomas Harrison alternated between extreme weakness brought on by his debilitating fits and âextraordinary strength, that if he folded his hands together, no man could pull them asunder: if he rolled his head, or tossed his whole body . . . no man could stay, or restrain him.â19 Harrison sometimes lay âas if he had been stark dead,â only to then leap up and skip with âsuch agility, as no tumbler could do the like. And yet all this while his legs were grown up so close to his buttocks, so he could not use them.â His contortions also affected his face, as when an observer reported, âSometimes we saw his chin drawn up to his nose, that his mouth could scarce be seen: sometimes his chin and forehead were drawn almost together like a bended bow.â20 Because convulsive fits provided the backbone of the possession script, published sources emphasized these astonishing feats to convince readers of the casesâ legitimacy.
If convulsive fits were the most common and widespread symptom of possession, broadly defined, then the one that most denoted demonic possession as opposed to obsession or bewitchment was the emission of strange voices from within. Frequently these were deep and guttural voices, like Alexander Nyndgeâs âbase sounding or hollow voice,â that differed enough from the subjectâs natural tone to convince observers of their preternatural origins.21 Demoniacs also roared, hissed, and made noises like animals. At one point Mary Gloverâs voice sounded âloud, fearful, and very strange, proceeding from the throat (like an hoarse dog that barks),â and observers compared her utterances to âthe hissing of a violent Squibbe . . . an Hen that hath the squacke: and . . . the loathsome noise that a Catt maketh forcing to cast her gorge.â22 Some demoniacs argued vehemently with the devil(s) who harmed them, modeling godly resistance to the forces of darkness and temptation. Mildred Norrington, while attempting to provide spectral corroboration for her accusation against a woman (possibly her own mother) for witchcraft, engaged in a long dialogue as the Devil. Using a strange deep voice, she provided myriad details of the sins of the accused, including the murder of three people, before she ultimately confessed to fraud.23 Thomas Darlingâs possession also involved the emission of voices both âsmallâ and âbig and hollow.â Darling performed an exhaustive show of resistance to the spirits, while pronouncing to observers that the prayer and fasting of faithful people was too strong for them to overcome.24 As these cases demonstrate, demoniacsâ dialogues with spirits made for effective propaganda because the practice allowed them to articulate doctrinal points that served Protestant or Catholic interests. Struggling against the utterances of the afflicting spirit, as well as struggling physically in convulsions, was a key part of the demoniacâs crossing through painful trials toward redemption.
Another important component of the cultural possession script was the tendency of victims of demonic possession and witchcraft-possession to see apparitions. Common visions included the Devil, the witch whose malice instigated their suffering, or creatures that represented the Devilâs servants and witchâs familiars. Richard Galisâs 1579 account made no explicit claims that he was possessed but neatly followed the witchcraft-possession script.25 Galisâs apparition took the form of a âCat or the devil himself in a Catâs likenessâ that would âhaunt my Chamber hurring and buzzing about my bed, vexing and troubling me beyond all measure.â26 The âSeven of Lancashire,â the group of demoniacs whom John Darrell and his associate George More treated in the late 1590s, helpfully reported the actions of their apparitions for the benefit of their audience: âThey would say: look where Satan is: look where Beelzebub is: look where Lucifer is: look where a great black dog is, with a firebrand in his mouth: see how Satan runneth at me with a spear in his hand to stick me to the heart, but God will defend me.â27 Apparitions played an especially crucial role in witchcraft-possession cases because they directed observersâ suspicions and provided the kind of spectral evidence that could prove decisive in trials. In 1612 Grace Sowerbutts reported seeing visions of the female relatives she accused of bewitching her, both in human form and in the shape of a black dog. Graceâs narrative provided effective propaganda even after her eventual confession of fraud, because she accused a priest of orchestrating the false charges against her Protestant family members.28
Those suffering from possession symptoms frequently showed a strong aversion to prayer or the Bible and often lost their ability to hear or read Scripture. These aversions were sometimes accompanied by an avoidance of productive actions in favor of frivolous or blasphemous ones, as devils would seek to interrupt all that was wholesome or productive and to replace it with rebellion. At Warboys in the 1590s, the five possessed Throckmorton girls screeched and interrupted prayers with dramatic fits that ceased at the precise moment the prayers did, and Elizabeth Throckmorton had âmerry fitsâ that resulted in the girls laughing âso heartily and excessively, as that if they had been awaked they would have been ashamed thereof.â Elizabeth was âalso full of trifling toys, & some merry jests of her own devising, whereat she would force b...