The Thirty Years War – A Beginners Guide Part 2

In my blog of October 11, I introduced you to the first phase of the Thirty Year’s War which was marked by the Bohemian revolt and the defeat of the French Huguenot cause.

A model of Heidleberg Castle in the mid 17th century

Since posting that blog, I have travelled to Germany and Austria and was thrilled to end up in Heidleberg and actually walk through the Castle, the seat of the Palatinate rulers and the home of the Winter King and Queen. As a historian it was fascinating to see "on the ground" how the history of Europe at the time tied together. Plenty of ideas for future blogs!


Back to the Thirty Year's War!

At the end of 1625 we had left the situation as following: 

Frederick V, Elector of Palatine and one time King of Bohemia is in exile, the Catholic Habsburgs are in full control of Bohemia, Holland and the Palatinate. The French Catholics, who are unaligned to the Habsburgs are in control of France. The Protestant cause is now resting in Holland, Denmark and Sweden (and over in the East where Transylvania has triumphed) and an uneasy peace is ensuing.

We now move to phase 2 of the Thirty Year’s War – the interventions by Denmark and Sweden. You may wonder why these two States became involved. While the defence of the Protestant Religion was certainly a reason, it was in their economic interest to keep the Baltic German States Protestant and friendly.

Round 3:  The “Emperor’s War” or the Low Saxon War (1625 -1629)

While the Bohemian War raged, the Lutheran (protestant) King Christian IV of Denmark had come to the aid of the protestant forces in Lower Saxony. Christian IV had one important commodity – money. Due gleaned from tolls on the Oresund (the strait separating Denmark from Scandanavia) and war reparation from Sweden. With aid from England (and, rather surprisingly, France), Christian raised a substantial force of 20,000 mercenaries.

Unknown to Christian, Ferdinand II had recruited Albrecht von Wallenstein, a Bohemian nobleman who had profited enormously for supporting the winning side in the Bohemian revolt. When Christian invaded Lower Saxony in 1626 he found his little force up against a force of up to 100,000 soldiers. He was forced to retire and Wallenstein marched north and occupying Denmark as far as the capital itself.

Christian IV was forced to sue for peace and in 1629 the Treaty of Lubeck was signed which allowed Christian to keep Denmark as long as he stayed out of the German States. Denmark was out of the war.

End of Round 1:  Denmark is out. In the next 2 years the Emperor assumes more German territory and the death of Gabriel Bethlan, the protestant ruler of Transylvania, marks the fall of the Protestant cause in the East.

Round 4:  Sweden to the rescue! (1630 - 1635)

King Gustavus Adophus of Sweden

The warrior king, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden is a blog subject in his own right. His intervention in the wars, turned the tables on the Emperor’s ambitions and ensured Sweden remained a major influence in European affairs until well into the eighteenth century.

Like Christian IV of Denmark, Gustavus Adolphus was subsidised by France and by the Dutch and in 1630 Swedish forces entered the arena through the Duchy of Pomerania, defeating the Catholic League at the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631. With an army composed mainly of German and Scottish mercenaries, he marched south, virtually unopposed.

The Emperor was forced to once again call on the aid of Wallenstein, whom he had dismissed in 1630 and did not entirely trust. The Swedish defeated Wallenstein at the Battle of Lutzen in 1632 but Gustavus Adolphus was killed in that battle.

Wallenstein became involved in trying to broker a peace between the two sides and in 1633 Ferdinand fearing Wallenstein would switch sides, arranged for his arrest but Wallenstein was killed by one of his own officers when he attempted to contact the Swedes.  With Gustav Adolphus dead, the Swedes were defeated at the battle of Nordlingen in 1634 and driven out of the south of Germany.

In 1635 the Peace of Prague was signed in which an amnesty was granted to those who had sided with the Swedes. It was agreed that the Lutheran rulers of northeast Germany would be protected, the armies of the German states were assumed into the Imperial army and the German princes were forbidden from treating with each other.  

The Peace of Prague did not involve the Swedish who still occupied the northern states of Germany and nor did it satisfy the French because of the power it gave to the Habsburgs.

End of Round 4:  The Swedish forces are in occupation in the northern part of Germany. The Habsburgs still control Bohemia, Austria, Spain and the Low Countries.

The Swedes and the French came together for the final phase of the Thirty Year’s War.

Round 5:  The French connection (1635 -1648)

You would think that the French, being Catholic, would have supported the Imperial cause, but France (notably Cardinal Richlieu) felt threatened by the rising power of the Habsburgs whose territories now bordered France on all sides. In 1635 Richelieu declared war on Spain and in 1636 and the Holy Roman Empire in 1636. France aligned with Sweden and opened the offensive in the Low Countries and Germany.

Initially the French suffered disaster with the Imperial forces entering French territory and threatening Paris itself but with the aid of the Swedes they pushed the Spanish back and began to regain the lost German territories. At the second battle of Breitenfeld (outside Liepzig) in 1642, the Swedish general Torstenson, inflicted a massive defeat on the Imperial army, forcing Ferdinand III, now the Holy Roman Emperor (following the death of his father in early 1637).

In 1643 Denmark re-entered the war, but this time on the Imperial side. Torstenson and the Swedish navy made short work of the Danes, neutralising them. Over the next few years Torstenson drove through Germany, driving the Imperial army before him and culminating in the battle of Jankau near Prague in 1644. Meanwhile the French under the Duke de Conde defeated the Bavarian forces at second battle of Nordlingen in 1645. In 1648, the Swedes entered Prague and the Thirty Years War was over. Over the next few months a series of treaties were signed, known collectively as the Peace of Westphalia.

The fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire following the Peace of Westphalia

End Round 5:  Only Austria/Bohemia remains in the Habsburg hands, the remainder of the Holy Roman Empire is fragmented into individual states. France and Spain remain at war for another eleven years.

The Human price of the War:  It is estimated that the population of Germany by 15-30% with some parts (such as Westphalia) losing 75% of its population to disease and famine.

Involvement:  This graph illustrates the complex involvement of the European powers in the struggle.

	Directly against Emperor
	Indirectly against Emperor
	Directly for Emperor
	Indirectly for Emperor

This is very much a simplistic overview of what was an extraordinarily complex political and religious scenario. It has, however, helped me clarify what the major issues and movements were in the period and I hope you have found it interesting.


For further reading, I commend you to good old Wikipedia which just abounds in resources on this subject.

A Hoydens New Year!

While the Hoydens all share a burning passion for all things seventeenth century sometimes our writing takes away from our first love and we would like to take this opportunity to recap our 2011 and look forward to 2012 (and beyond) with some exciting new stories coming from these talented writers.


2011 New Releases from the Hoydens:

Anita Davison celebrated the release of two new books in June and September:  Trencarrow Secret and Culloden Spirit:   both Victorian "gothic" novels.


Alison Stuart released a collection of her published short stories:  Tower of Tales

Coming in 2012:


Mary Sharratt's latest book ILLUMINATIONS about the extraordinary nun, Hildegard of Bingen will be released . Mary writes "...My new book ILLUMINATIONS: A NOVEL OF HILDEGARD VON BINGEN will be published in October 2012 to coincide with Hildegard's upcoming canonization and her elevation to a Doctor of the Church. There are only thirty-three Doctors of the Church and only three have been women, so this is a major step forward to recognizing Hildegard's legacy as a great woman of ideas. Hildegard was a 12th century abbess, composer, theologian, scientist, visionary, and healer."

Sandra Gulland will be launching her own e-book imprint, Sandra Gulland Ink. All Sandra's books will be made available in e-format through this new imprint.


And looking further into the future:


In Spring 2013 Sandra Gulland will release a new book, the  (as yet unnamed) true story of a maid, Claude des Oeillets, the daughter of itinerant actors who rose to become the confidential attendant to the most powerful woman in the 17th century French court of the Sun King: Madame de Montespan, mistress of the charismatic King Louis IV. 


In the meantime: 


Kim Murphy has been working on a sequel to The Dreaming  and her first non-fiction title A Fate Worse than Death:  Rape During the Civil War. We have been following her research trips to the archives with interest! 


Alison Stuart is keeping her fingers crossed and hoping that her hard work of 2011(her first year of writing full time) will result in some good news in the new year. 

Wishing all our followers a happy and successful 2012!

Alison, Mary, Anita, Kim and Sandra

Witches of Maryland

In North America, most people think of Salem when witch trials are mentioned. I've already blogged about Virginia witches where the first such trial was held on the continent in 1626. But the neighboring colony of Maryland was known to have witch trials as well.

At least twelve people were prosecuted for being a witch in that colony. The earliest known trials were aboard ships bound for Maryland. In 1654, on the Charity from London, a storm struck at sea. Passengers aboard the ship claimed the relentless storm was caused by "the malevolence of witches." An old woman by the name of Mary Lee was found to have a "witch's mark." The crew hanged her. Her corpse and all of her belongings were thrown into the sea.

The second sea hanging involved the great grandfather of George Washington, Colonel John Washington, in 1659. He accused the owner of the ship Edward Prescott for hanging Elizabeth Richardson. Little is known as to why she was regarded to be a witch. Washington was unavailable for Prescott's trial. Prescott claimed John Greene had been in command of the ship at the time and was acquitted of any wrongdoing.

In 1665, a grand jury refused to indict Elizabeth Bennett for being a witch. Not much is known about the case, except that she was the wife of a wealthy landowner, which makes her quick acquittal understandable.

Rebecca Fowler wasn't so lucky. In 1685, she had "not the fear of God before her eyes, but being led by the instigation of the Devill certain evill & dyabolicall Artes called withcrafts charmes & sorceryes... did use practice & exercise... against one Francis Sandsbury... and Several other persons... and their bodyes were very much the worse, consumed, pined & lamed..."

Rebecca Fowler was hanged on the 9^th day of October, 1685.

Similar charges had been brought against John Cowman in 1674. He was convicted "...for Witchcraft Conjuration Sorcery or Enchantment used upon the Body of Elizabeth Goodale." The governor gave him a last minute reprieve, providing the sheriff take him to the gallows and place a rope around his neck. After that he was to remain an indentured servant to the governor and Council that had spared his life.

The most famous Maryland witch is Moll Dyer. Because she was an herbal healer (a cunning woman?), she was said to have been accused of being a witch and driven out of her home during a winter night by the local townspeople and her home burned to the ground. Her body was found by a child a few days later frozen to a large stone. Unfortunately, historians have never uncovered any evidence that Moll ever existed. Even though the legend has been disregarded as a folktale, the rock where she supposedly died and left a hand print sits outside the historical society in Leonardtown.

Several other cases surfaced throughout the 17^th and into the early 18^th century. Katharine Pout was fined one hundred pounds of tobacco, and the last trial was held in 1712 when Virtue Violl was acquitted. Like most other areas, the majority of those accused were women, and in Maryland, those cases were 90 percent.

Kim Murphy
www.KimMurphy.Net

Hortense de Mancini

Hortense Mancini

During my Restoration research, I came across another notorious but fascinating woman who lived by her own rules and scandalised Europe - Hortense de Mancini was rich and titled naturally, how else could she have got away with her outrageous behaviour?

Born 'Ortensia' in Rome on 6th June 1646 to Baron Lorenzo Mancini, an Italian aristocrat and Girolama Mazzarini, the sister of Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister of France. Ortensia was the fourth of the five famous Mancini sisters, who along with two of their female Martinozzi cousins, were known at the court of King Louis XIV as the Mazarinettes. After her father’s death in 1650, her mother brought her daughters from Rome to Paris so Cardinal Mazarin, might gain them advantageous marriages.

Charles II proposed to Hortense in 1659, but Cardinal Mazarin believed the exiled king to have little in the way of prospects and refused the union. On Charles’ restoration, Mazarin realised his mistake and offered a dowry of 5 million livres, which Charles refused.

Hortense's hand was also requested by Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy, another first cousin of Louis XIV, but failed when Cardinal Mazarin refused to include the stronghold-castle of Pigneol in her dowry. A similar situation occurred when the Duke of Lorraine offered for her also.

On 1 March 1661, fifteen-year-old Hortense was married to the twenty-nine-year-old Armand-Charles de la Porte, duc de La Meilleraye, one of the richest men in Europe, and granted the title of duc Mazarin. On the death of Cardinal Mazarin shortly afterward, he gained access to his wife's huge inheritance, which included the Palais Mazarin in Paris and its fine art collection.

Hortense was young, bright, and popular; Armand-Charles was miserly, extremely jealous and mentally unstable. He had his female servants' front teeth knocked out to prevent them from attracting male attention, and chipped off or painted over the "dirty bits" in his art collection. He forbade his wife to keep company with other men, made midnight searches for hidden lovers, insisted she spend hours a day at prayer, and forced her to leave Paris and move to the country.

Rebellious, Hortense began a lesbian love affair with the sixteen-year-old Sidonie de Courcelles. Her husband sent both girls to a convent to cure their immorality, which failed as they plagued the nuns with pranks: adding ink to the holy water, flooded the nuns' beds, and headed for freedom up the chimney. The duchess in her memoirs refutes these claims saying that when she asked the nuns for water to wash her feet she was refused, and:

'It is true that we filled a large coffer which stood in our dormitory with water, and, the boards of the floor being very loosely joined together, the water which overflowed leaked through the wretched floor and wetted the beds of the good sisters. This accident was talked about as if it had been something which we had done of design.'

Despite their differences, Hortense and her husband had four children, whom she left behind when she made her escape with the help of her brother, Philippe, Duc de Nevers, who procured horses and an escort to take her to Rome, and the refuge of her sister Marie Mancini, now the Princess Colonna.

Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy, declared himself her protector as did Louis XIV and granted her a pension of 24 thousand livres. Hortense retired to Chambéry in Haute-Savoie and as Savoy’s mistress, established her home as a meeting place for authors, philosophers, and artists. After the death of the duke in 1675, she was turned out by his jealous widow, Marie Jeanne Baptiste de Savoie-Nemours, and Hortense's own husband froze her income, including the pension from Louis XIV. The English ambassador to France, Ralph Montagu, hoped Hortense would replace King Charles' current mistress, Louise de Kerouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, and therefore increase his own standing.On January 2, 1676, the French Ambassador, Ruvigny, wrote to inform Pomponne that:

'The Duchesse de Mazarin had arrived two days previously in London, dressed as a cavalier, accompanied by two women and five men, without counting a little Moor, who takes his meals with her.'

Now 30, Hortense arrived under the pretext of a visit to her young cousin, Mary of Modena, the new wife of James, Duke of York. She cut an impressive figure, tall and beautiful in men's clothing or women's, she rode and drank hard, gambled, shot pistols, swam in rivers, took lovers of both genders, played the guitar and danced like a gypsy.Saint-Evremond, who cherished a boundless admiration for Hortense described her:

'She is one of those Roman beauties who in no way resemble your dolls of France ... the colour of her eyes has no name ; it is neither blue, nor grey, nor altogether black, but a combination of all the three ; they have the sweetness of blue, the gaiety of grey, and, above all, the fire of the black . . . there are none in the world so sweet . . . there are none in the world so serious and so grave when her thoughts are occupied with any serious subject . . . they are large, well-set, full of fire and intelligence ... all the movements of her mouth are full of charm, and the strangest grimaces become her wonderfully, when she imitates those who make them. Her smiles would soften the hardest heart and ease the most profound depression of mind  they almost entirely change her expression, which is naturally haughty, and spread over it a certain tincture of sweetness and kindness, which reassures those hearts which her charms have alarmed. Her nose, which without doubt is incomparably well-turned and perfectly-proportioned, imparts a noble and lofty air to her whole physiognomy. The tone of her voice is so harmonious and agreeable that none can hear her speak without being sensibly moved. Her complexion is so delicately clear that I cannot believe that any one who examined it closely can deny it to be whiter than the driven snow. Her hair is of a glossy black, with nothing harsh about it. To see how naturally it curls as soon as it is let loose, one would say it rejoiced to shade so lovely a head ; she has the finest turned countenance that a painter ever imagined." 

Hortense soon attracted the attention of Charles II and Nell Gwyn went into mourning, in ironical anticipation of the fall of the Duchess of Portsmouth. By mid 1676, Hortense had replaced Louise de Kerouaille in Charles II's affections and was granted a Royal pension of £4,000, considerably lightening her financial troubles, but causing poor Louise to pour out her anxiety to anyone who would listen.

Louise de Kerouaille Duchess of Portsmounth

Obtusely, Hortense began a lesbian relationship with Anne Lennard, Countess of Sussex, a girl half her age and the king's illegitimate daughter by Barbara Palmer.  Gossip about the two was salacious and Lady Chaworth wrote to her brother Lord Roos in December, 1676:

"Lady Sussex and Madame Mazarin have privately learnt to fence, and went downe into St. James Parke the other day with drawne swords under theire night gownes, which they drew out and made severall fine passes with, to the admiration of severall men that was lookers on in the Parke."

Anne's husband subsequently ordered his wife to the country, where she refused to do anything but lie in bed, repeatedly kissing a miniature of Hortense.

The introduction to Aphra Behn's ‘The History of the Nun’ has been taken as a suggestion that Behn too had romantic relations with Hortense, who also infuriated Charles II by beginning an affair with Louis I de Grimaldi, Prince de Monaco. Charles cut off her pension, but almost immediately repented and restarted the payments, though this behaviour signified the end of her position as the king's favourite. She and Charles remained friends, and Louise de Kerouaille returned to her role as the King's mistress.

A few days before Charles II’s death in 1685,  the diarist John Evelyn wrote:

the King sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleveland, and Mazarin [Hortense] Six days after, all was in dust.

Hortense was well-provided for by the next king, James II, possibly due to her kinship with the new queen, Mary of Modena. Even when James fled England and William and Mary came to power in 1688, she remained in London, albeit with a reduced pension, where she presided over such as Charles de Saint-Évremond, the poet and epicurean, who brought to her door all the learned men of London.

Evelyn recorded her eventual death in 1699 at the age of 53:

......... born at Rome, educated in France, and was an extraordinary beauty and wit, but dissolute, and impatient of matrimonial restraint, so as to be abandoned by her husband, and banished: when she came to England for shelter, lived on a pension given her here, and is reported to have hastened her death by intemperate drinking strong spirits.

With the exception of Marguerite de Valois, Hortense and her sister, Marie Mancini, were the first women in France to put their memoirs into print, possibly to record for posterity the cause of separation from their abusive husbands. Hortense may have committed suicide, keeping her life dramatic until the very end. Her creditors seized her corpse, but her husband, the only man rich enough to redeem it, claimed her body and carted it around on his travels in France, before finally allowing it to be interred by the tomb of her uncle, Cardinal Mazarin.

The Pendle Witches and Their Magic: Part Two

Blacko Tower, a Victorian folly (ca 1890) near Malkin Tower Farm, Lancashire



The crimes of which Mother Demdike and her fellow witches were accused dated back years before the 1612 trial. The trial itself might have never happened had it not been for King James I’s obsession with the occult. Until his reign, witch persecutions had been relatively rare in England compared with Scotland and Continental Europe. But James’s book Daemonologie presented the idea of a vast conspiracy of satanic witches threatening to undermine the nation. Shakespeare wrote his play Macbeth, which presents the first depiction of a witches’ coven in English drama, in James I’s honour.

To curry favour with his monarch, Lancashire magistrate Roger Nowell of Read Hall arrested and prosecuted no fewer than twelve individuals from the Pendle region and even went to the far fetched extreme of accusing them of conspiring their very own Gunpowder Plot to blow up Lancaster Castle. Two decades before the more famous Matthew Hopkins began his witch-hunting career in East Anglia, Roger Nowell had set himself up as witchfinder general of Lancashire.

What do we actually know about Mother Demdike? At the time of her trial she appears as a widow and matriarch, living in a place called Malkin Tower with her widowed daughter Elizabeth Device, and her three grandchildren, James, Alizon, and Jennet. Her clan was very poor and supported themselves by a combination of begging and by the family business of cunning craft. The trial transcripts mention that local farmer John Nutter of Bull Hole Farm near Newchurch hired Demdike to bless his sick cattle. Interestingly John Nutter chose not to testify against her family in the trial.

Demdike’s family at Malkin Tower had a powerful rival in the form of Chattox, another widow and charmer, who lived a few miles away at West Close near Fence. Chattox allegedly bewitched to death her landlord’s son, Robert Nutter of Greenhead, for attempting to rape her daughter, Anne Redfearne. For social historians it’s interesting to see how having a fearsome reputation as a cunning woman could be the only true power a poor woman could hope to wield.

Unfortunately this could also backfire as it did with Demdike’s granddaughter, Alizon Device, who exchanged angry words with a pedlar outside Colne in March, 1612. Moments later the pedlar collapsed and suddenly went stiff and lame on one half of his body and lost the power of speech. Today we would clearly recognise this as a stroke. But the pedlar and several witnesses were convinced that Alizon had lamed her victim with witchcraft. Even she seemed to believe this herself, immediately falling to her knees and begging his forgiveness. This unfortunate event triggered the arrest of Alizon and her grandmother. Alizon wasted no time in implicating Chattox, her grandmother’s rival, and Chattox’s daughter, Anne Redfearne.

The four accused witches were interrogated by Roger Nowell, and then force-marched to Lancaster Castle, walking over fells and moorland. Both Demdike and Chattox, whose real name was Anne Whittle, were frail and elderly. It was amazing they survived the journey. In Lancaster they were handed over to the sadistic Thomas Covell, the gaoler who reputedly slashed the ears off Edward Kelly, friend of John Dee, when he was arrested on the charge of forgery. The women were chained to a ring in the floor in the bottom of the Well Tower. Although torture was officially forbidden in England, gaolers were allowed to starve and beat their prisoners at will. Being chained to a ring in the floor and kept in constant darkness would certainly feel like torture for those who had to endure it.

On Good Friday following the arrests, worried family and friends met at Malkin Tower to discuss what they would do in regard to this tragic situation. Constable John Hargreaves came to write down the names of everyone present and later Roger Nowell made further arrests, accusing these people of convening at Malkin Tower on Good Friday for a witches’ sabbat, something he would have read about in Daemonologie. The arrests didn’t stop until he had the mythical thirteen to make up the alleged coven. Twelve were kept at Lancaster and one, Jennet Preston who lived over the county line in Gisburn, Yorkshire, was sent to York. Apart from Chattox and Demdike and their immediate families, none of these newly arrested people had previous reputations as cunning folk. It seemed they were just concerned friends and neighbours who were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Kept in such horrible conditions, Demdike died in prison before she came to trial, thus cheating the hangman. The others experienced a different fate.

The first to be arrested, Alizon was the last to be tried at Lancaster in August, 1612. Her final recorded words on the day before she was hanged for witchcraft are a moving tribute to her grandmother’s power as a healer. Roger Nowell, the prosecutor, brought John Law, the pedlar she had allegedly lamed, before her. Again Alizon begged the man’s forgiveness for her perceived crime against him. John Law, in return, said that if she had the power to lame him, she must also have the power to heal him. Alizon regrettably told him that she wasn’t able to, but if her grandmother, Old Demdike had lived, she could and would have healed him.

Mother Demdike is dead but not forgotten. By the mid-17th century, Demdike’s name became a local byword for witch, according to John Harland and T.T. Wilkinson’s Lancashire Folklore. In 1627, only fifteen years after the Pendle Witch Trial, a woman named Dorothy Shaw of Skippool, Lancashire, was accused by her neighbour of being a “witch and a Demdyke.”

History is a fluid thing that continually shapes the present. Long after her demise, Mother Demdike and her fellow Pendle Witches endure, their story and spirit woven into the living landscape, its weft and warp, like the stones and the streams that cut across the moors. Enthralled by their true history, I wrote my novel, Daughters of the Witching Hill, dedicated to their memory. Other books have been written about the Pendle Witches, but mine turns the tables, telling the story from Demdike and Alizon Device’s point of view. I longed to give these women what their world denied them—their own voice. Their voices deserve to finally be heard.

Sources:

Owen Davies, Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History (Hambledon Continuum)
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 (Yale)
Malcolm Gaskill, Witchfinders: A Seventeenth Century English Tragedy (John Murray)
John Harland and T.T. Wilkinson, Lancashire Folklore (Kessinger Publishing)
King James I, Daemonologie, available online
Jonathan Lumby, The Lancashire Witch-Craze (Carnegie)
Margaret Murray, The Witch Cult in Western Europe, available online
Edgar Peel and Pat Southern, The Trials of the Lancashire Witches (Nelson)
Robert Poole, ed., The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories (Manchester University Press)
Thomas Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, available online
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Penguin)
John Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft (Ams Pr Inc)
Emma Wilby, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits (Sussex Academic Press)
Benjamin Woolley, The Queen’s Conjuror: The Life and Magic of Dr. Dee (Flamingo)