James Sharpe is senior lecturer in history at the University of York. He is the author of Crime in Early Modern
England 1550-1750 and Early Modern England: A Social History 1550--1750.
Review
"This is a humane and learned book, which will be essential reading for everyone with a serious interest
in this fascinating topic."
--Robin Briggs, author of Communities of Belief: Cultural and Social Tensions in Early Modern France
University of Pennsylvania Press Web Site, August, 2000
Summary
They flew through the air, consorted with animals, and made pacts with the devil. Witches were as unquestioned
as alchemy or astrology in medieval England; yet it wasn't until the midsixteenth century that laws were passed
against them. Now a leading historian of crime and society in early modern England offers the first scholarly overview
of witchcraft in that country in over eighty years, examining how tensions between church, state, and society produced
widespread distrust among fearful people.
Instruments of Darkness takes readers back to a time when witchcraft was accepted as reality at all levels
of society. James Sharpe draws on legal records and other sources to reveal the interplay between witchcraft beliefs
in different partts in the social hierarchy. Along the way, he offers disturbing accounts of witch-hunts, such
as the East Anglian trials of 1645-47 that sent more than 100 people to the gallows. He tells how poor, elderly
women were most often accused of witchcraft and challenges feminist claims that witch-hunts represented male persecution
by showing that many accusers were themselves women.
Prosecution of witches gradually declined with increasing skepticism among jurists, new religious attitudes, and
scientific advances that explained away magic. But for two hundred years, thousands participated in one of history's
most notorious persecutions. Instruments of Darkness is a fascinating case study that deepens our understanding
of this age-old cultural phenomenon and sheds new light on one society in which it occurred.
