ABSTRACT
This very inky and sometimes barely legible octavo pamphlet, the sole surviving copy, is the only example of a church-court investigation of witchcraft finding its way into print. The original manuscript account, from which the pamphlet’s main text was transcribed almost without change, is in a volume of similar cases in Devon Record Office (Chanter MS 855B, fos 310-12). It gives John Walsh’s name as ‘Welsh’. John Walsh is the only male ‘witch’ in this period to have an account devoted to his trial (although see the later ‘life’ of Dr Lambe, and Walsh’s contemporary Francis Coxe for conjurors).1 The anti-Catholic message of the pamphlet fits well with his masculine, semi-learned brand of magic, as it would not with more mainstream, predominantly female, witchcraft. Walsh learned his rituals from Sir Robert of Dreiton (Drayton), who, we are told, was a Catholic priest. Walsh’s ritual – like Catholic ritual – is represented in this Protestant church-court document as evil and superstitious, connected with the devil and with beliefs about fairies which Walsh’s questioners probably regarded as evidence of (papist) ignorance. The male ‘witch’ (more accurately, a conjuror, cunning man or village magician) is shown as half-educated, misled and yet powerful – a figure analogous to contemporary representations of Catholics, and quite unlike the traditional representation of the female witch.
