ABSTRACT
In April 1582 a pamphlet, giving an account of the preliminary examinations of several suspected witches from the English county of Essex, was published by the London printer Thomas Dawson. Entitled A true and just Recorde of the Information, Examination and Confession of all the Witches, taken at S. Oses in the countie of Essex, it was signed by an author calling himself W. W. Yet the pamphlet had surprisingly little impact on English practices after 1582, at least as they are recorded in later pamphlets and in Assize records. The context of French demonology was saturated with the notion that witches and Protestants had a great deal in common as enemies of church and state. The witch accusations at St Osyth in 1582 thus offered one English magistrate an ideal case study in which he could implement those of Bodin’s ideas which he thought helpful in the English context.
