ABSTRACT
At over one hundred pages, this is the longest witchcraft pamphlet since such publications began. The texts used here are from the British Library and Trinity College Cambridge, a combination of which gives the most legible version. The pamphlet seems to have been inspired by the self-publicising Brian Darcey or Darcy, JP, the magistrate who took the examinations of the witches involved. The events described are centred around the Essex village of St Osyth, in a region where the Darcy family were powerful – the head of the family being Baron Darcy of Chiche (St Osyth), the pamphlet’s dedicatee.1 Brian Darcy, a less important and older family member, had been a JP for two years when he questioned the witches, and became Sheriff of Essex in 1585, perhaps as a result of his obvious zeal and desire to shine.
