ABSTRACT
There were several overlapping ecclesiastical jurisdictions in Essex. The more important were those of the Bishop of London and the Archdeacons of Middlesex, Colchester, and Essex.1 The Bishop had two courts, that of his Commissary in Essex and Hertfordshire, and his Consistory. The former covered about 100 villages in Essex; only eight witchcraft or sorcery cases were discovered in this source, but growing accessibility of the material will almost certainly furnish new cases. Similarly, the nineteen cases so far encountered in the Consistory Court records probably only constitute a fraction of all the witchcraft and sorcery cases tried there.2
