Witchcraft and the Act of 1604 / edited by John Newton and Jo Bath.

Leiden : Brill, 2008.

63594

Great Britain. -- Act against conjuration, witchcraft and dealing with evil and wicked spirits -- Congresses.

Witchcraft -- Congresses -- History -- England.

1. Introduction : witchcraft; witch codes; witch act

2. King James's experience of witches, and the 1604 English Witchcraft Act

3. Standing within the prospect of belief : Macbeth, King James, and witchcraft

4. Witchcraft and possession at the accession of James I : the publication of Samuel Harsnett's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures

5. (Re)possession of dispossession : John Darrell and diabolical discourse

6. Applying the Act of 1604 : witches in Essex, Northamptonshire and Lancashire

7. The treatment of potential witches in North-East England, c. 1649-1680

8. Witchcraft and stage spectacle : spectacular witches after 1604

9. Witchcraft, emotion and imagination in the English Civil War

10. The politics of Pandaemonian

11. Decriminalising the witch : the origin of and response to the 1736 Witchcraft Act.

The essays in this book examine the relationship of the Witchcraft Act of 1604 to the culture and society of seventeenth-century England.

Based on a conference held in March 2004 at St. John's College, Durham.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9789004165281

9004165282

xi, 248 pages ; 25 cm