English Demonologies presents the first comprehensive study of theoretical writings on witchcraft in England during the early modern period. It is also the first work to integrate the much wider understanding of the Devil – "demonology" – with the more specific, complex and troubled attempts by contemporary thinkers to develop theories of witchcraft.
Ideas about the Devil pervaded Protestant thought in Elizabethan and Stuart England, emphasizing his role as an unseen spirit of temptation and falsehood, as well as the promoter of counterfeit religion. By examining the work of English writers on witchcraft from Reginald Scot and George Gifford in the 1580s to Francis Hutchinson and Richard Boulton in the early eighteenth century, this book demonstrates how conventional assumptions about the prince of darkness both underpinned and challenged contemporary conceptions of the crime.
This book reveals the contours and continuities of English thought on the subject, including a commitment to the doctrine of divine providence as an explanation for suffering, an emphasis on the Devil's role as tempter and deceiver, and an awareness of the problems of finding evidence for preternatural crimes. It also identifies an important turn towards the empirical investigation of evil spirits in the later seventeenth century.
English Demonologies is essential reading for all students and scholars studying the history of witchcraft and early modern religious thought.