Instruments of darkness : witchcraft in england, 1550-1750

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Instruments of darkness : witchcraft in england, 1550-1750

James Sharpe

(Penguin books, . Penguin history)

Penguin, 1997

Available at  / 6 libraries

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Note

First published by Hamish Hamiltonf 1996

Bibliography: p. 345-352

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This book is a timely account of the key period in the history of English witchcraft. It looks at the tensions in church, state and society which caused witchcraft increasingly to be regarded as a threat and to be legislated against in the mid sixteenth century. It then traces the gradual onset of scepticism which led to the abolition of such legislature in the mid eighteenth century.

Table of Contents

  • Part 1 Witchcraft in Elizabethan and Ealy Stuart England: witchcraft and elite mentalities
  • witchcraft in popular culture
  • the theological and legal bases for witch-hunting. Part 2 Five themes
  • patterns for prosecution and punishment
  • England's mass witch-hunt - East Anglia, 1645-7
  • accusations, counter-measures and the local community
  • women and witchcraft
  • possession. Part 3 The problem of decline: the growth of judicial scepticism
  • a changing religious context
  • science and the decline of witchcraft.

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