ABSTRACT
This paper will assume a knowledge of the historical background to witchcraft prosecutions in sixteenth -and seventeenth-century England. (The best general studies of English witchcraft are Ewen, 1929, and Notestein, 1911.) It will also assume a general knowledge of current anthropological interpretations of witchcraft and sorcery. 2 Its more general aim is to show by a concrete example the way in which the disciplines of history and social anthropology may benefit each other.
