ABSTRACT
Of all the various manifestations of what today would be called magical or superstitious beliefs, perhaps the most popular were those dealing with the healing of the sick. A host of unauthorised healers plied their trade in seventeenth-century England, ranging from quacks, charmers, cunning folk and white witches to bone setters and surgeons. The recourse of many ordinary people to cunning folk and white witches in order to seek remedies for their ailments put many such practitioners in conflict with official physicians, still operating on mainly Galenic principles, and the church authorities. This was partly because they represented direct competition to official physicians and also because they employed remedies which were felt to be either papist or demonic and thus not in keeping with the dominant religious ideology prevalent during the seventeenth century. In this chapter it is intended to examine some aspects of seventeenth-century healing, together with the methods used, and also to make a detailed analysis of the role of cunning folk and to examine how they were treated by the authorities. Many accused of witchcraft were not simply malevolent old crones, disliked and rejected by their community; they were often popular figures, providing useful services to their community, such as healing the sick and finding lost property.
