ABSTRACT
The involvement of Evans and Sherrart in diagnosing William Sommers's possession in late October suggests that he involved the curate and his fellow clerk early on, and actively sought help for his wife's son. It may seem a facile pun, but the demonic possession of William Sommers was partly a battle for the physical and spiritual possession of the town of Nottingham itself: its corporate body and ecclesiastical soul. Nottingham's Corporation seems to have been genuinely conservative in religion, apt to suspect that the godly were plotting sedition. From the Pilgrimage of Grace to the Civil War, Nottingham was of vital religious and strategic importance: David Marcombe calls it a front-line base. But Aldridge gave the message a particular conservative spin: affirming that for as much as they in Nottingham, notwithstanding the admonitions of many godly Preachers did still continue in their sinnes: God had sent the Devill to reprove them, and to make them ashamed of their former obstinacie.
