ABSTRACT
The trials of alleged witches, as described in both court records and contemporary pamphlets, thus constitute an area of central concern to the historian of witchcraft, not least, as we have suggested, because criminal court archives and pamphlets describing witch-trials remain two of the major bodies of source material upon which a study of wider aspects of witch beliefs in early modern England might be based. It is, indeed, upon some of these wider aspects that we will now focus our attention. We have already examined some of the educated beliefs, especially those of learned theologians, and this chapter will carry us in another direction, towards the beliefs of the population at large. What should be remembered, however, is that here as elsewhere in the culture of the period, 'elite' and 'popular' beliefs did not operate in isolation, and were not hermetically sealed from each other [120]. The views of the educated and the population at large interacted, the one constantly informing and modifying the other. It is therefore sometimes possible to see how what we might describe as popular ideas about witchcraft connected not just with the more general popular belief system, but also with the elite mentalities and, in particular, with the official religious beliefs of the period. As we shall see, the issues arising from these aspects of witchcraft history are frequently very complex, and currently many of them await more detailed research, more rigorous analysis, and more sophisticated conceptualisation.
