ABSTRACT
The first witchcraft pamphlet to be published begins a long tradition of telling simple stories, complicated by the nature of their sources and by what storyteller and reader believe about what is told. The pamphlet tells of three accused Essex women, Agnes and Jone Waterhouse and Elizabeth Frauncis, and of their familiar Sathan, which turns from cat, to toad, to dog and commits various acts of maleficium (harmful witchcraft) in Hatfield Peverel. The women were tried at Chelmsford assizes on 26 July 1566, with one other, who is not mentioned in the pamphlet although she was tried by the same jury as Jone Waterhouse. Unusually, two witches pleaded guilty: Elizabeth Frauncis was imprisoned, Agnes Waterhouse hanged. Jone Waterhouse was found not guilty of disabling Agnes Browne by witchcraft on 17 July 1566 – a date which supports the pamphleteer’s assertion that her actions brought about all three trials. Thus trial records corroborate most of the main assertions made by the pamphlet – which is itself made partly from pre-trial documents.
