Because Ideas Matter...
The faculty and staff of Butler University's College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences presents
Recommended Readings
The Case of Witchcraft at Coggeshall, Essex in the Year
1699
by Rev. J. Boys, A. R. Smith, 1901
Reviewed by George Geib
It's common to see the age of Newton and
Locke as an enlightened era. But out there among the public, older
and darker thoughts and beliefs continued to exert a powerful hold
on the imagination. This remarkable tract, written in 1712 from
notes taken contemporary to the events in 1699, details the
investigation of the Widow Coman in Coggeshall by her parish
minister and by a number of his frightened neighbors. The account
is literate, reading almost as if we were there at the
interrogations when the widow kept confessing and recanting her
communion with the devil. Many of the features that you think were
the creations of Gothic literature, from witches teats to trial by
drowning -- which the poor woman failed and ultimately died from --
are recounted with a voice of Christian credulity mixed with
horror. It's a remarkable episode detailing popular violence and
the survival of folk legend in rural England. Transcribed "from the
manuscript in the possession of the publisher," only fifty copies
were printed. It deserved a wider audience.
- George Geib is a professor of history at Butler
University.