Liminal language: boundaries of magic and honor in early modern Essex.

Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, December, 2007 by Timbers, Frances

In 1645, in the small village of Stisted, Essex, two serving maids told the Justice of the Peace that a group of twenty or more men and women had, on several occasions, visited various gentry households where they "conjured" the residents to sleep. This group included leading men of the community, male and female servants, and a "Conjurer, that went in black Apparrell." At the home of John Alston, the master of the two maids, the group dragged the master's married daughter out of bed and two men "had the use of her bodie." Then her husband was fetched and two of the maids "kissed him & puld up his shirt, & took up their Coates & lay downe on the top of him & they said that he did them some good, for he lay with them as man with a woman." They also dragged Alston's...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.