ABSTRACT
Even after extensive research, the factual outlines of witchcraft prosecutions are still blurred. It is particularly difficult to assess the number of witchcraft prosecutions before 1560. In Essex, for example, only one case has been discovered before that date. Even this was ‘white witchcraft’, blessing a plough.1 Yet it is hardly surprising that no cases have been found in Assize, Quarter Sessions, or ecclesiastical records, the main sources for prosecutions in the later period, since these only survive from 1560 onwards in Essex.2 The problem is in many ways similar for the whole of England. Although scattered cases of witchcraft can be discovered in medieval literature or court records,3 it is doubtful whether statistical comparison will ever be possible between the Elizabethan and earlier periods. Printed ecclesiastical records show a considerable number of sorcery cases in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, possibly on a level with those for the period we are studying.4 There are also references in early Privy Council records and earlier Assize rolls.5 Nevertheless, the general impression, based on a brief examination of printed medieval court records, is that prosecutions for witchcraft were not widespread.
