ABSTRACT
On February 27, 1596, while hare hunting with his uncle in the woods outside Burton-upon-Trent, thirteen-year-old Thomas Darling was bewitched. The “Boy of Burton” ran afoul of a malevolent witch and his demonic torments became the talk of the Godly Midlands. Darling fashioned himself as a pious demoniac enduring Satan’s torments as a trial of faith, rather than as a punishment for past transgressions. The Darling case marks Darrell’s re-emergence as a Puritan exorcist after a ten-year hiatus. Now settled in the vibrant spiritual community of Ashby de la Zouch, Darrell returned to active duty as a more experienced minister with a fully developed “Doctrin of Possession and Dispossession”.
This chapter surveys the different modes of demonic possession and possession-cum-witchcraft in Reformed Protestant spirituality, engaging with the performative aspects inherent across English possession narratives. Focus is placed on the intersecting Puritan networks in the English Midlands, along with their respective spiritual leaders. Darling’s demonic possession served an important role for these communities: validation that they had been signalled out for divine attention and a call to enact spiritual warfare against the Devil. To this effect, Darrell’s role in Darling’s dispossession established him as a renowned spiritual healer and Puritan evangelist in early modern England.
