ABSTRACT
This long and learned chapbook describes the bewitching of the earl of Rutland – who resided at Belvoir (“Beaver”) castle in Lincoln – and his family by Joan, Margaret, and Phillipa Flower. Although they were for a time employed as servants of the earl, the Flowers soon came to be distrusted and were relieved of their positions, which encouraged the three women to consort with the Devil and seek vengeance. Through their acts of maleficium, the earl’s two sons, Henry and Francis, died, their daughter was made very ill, and the noble lord and lady were deprived of the ability to produce more children. (Eventually, their only living child, Katherine, recovered and married George Villiers, the duke of Buckingham, the king’s favourite courtier and the wealthiest peer in the realm.) Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this chapbook is the lengthy introduction in which the author is suspicious of the various practitioners of what was then known as “natural philosophy”. Those who acted as “wise” men and women – who professed the ability to manipulate the natural world – were to him “cozeners and deceivers”, who swindled their customers for personal gain. Those who used charms, invoked spirits, dabbled in poison, foretold the future, raised souls, practiced astrology and others who dabbled in the darker arts were nothing more than witches, as described by many contemporary authors, such as James I in his Daemonologie (1997). Thus, the author paradoxically argues that those who professed “divine magic” for good (known as theurgy) were charlatans, while having no doubt that those who used “black magic” for evil were eminently real and dangerous.
