Introduction

John Darrell's story is one of an emergence into view, and then into text, because what he had been quietly doing and the beliefs that he had been quietly holding for over a decade had suddenly been raised to prominence by geographical, literary and political accidents. Darrell's fellow-exorcist George More was later to attribute some of the power of dispossession to using extemporary and not stinted official prayers. Darrell's career shows clearly that an emergence from the margins into market and shire towns, and finally into print in London itself, was construed as a provincial revolt. The dispossession of Katherine Wright escaped attention for decades not break through into public consciousness in the manner of later exorcisms. Whilst Darrell was in many ways content at Mansfield, as he later wrote, spiritually he was not satisfied. He moved to Ashby de la Zouch in Leicestershire.