Dangers of the Night: The Witch, the Devil, and the

"Nightmare" in Early Modern England

Charlotte-Rose Millar

Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, Volume

7, Number 2, 2018, pp. 154-181 (Article)

Published by Penn State University Press

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/702522

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 dangers of the night: the witch,
the devil, and the “nightmare”
in early ­modern england
Charlotte-Rose Millar

abstract
This article focuses on associations between early modern English witchcraft, demonic activity,
temptation and transformation, and the night. It has a particular emphasis on “nightmare”
encounters, a term used here not in the modern sense of a bad dream but in the premodern
sense of a physical assault by a supernatural being. In most early modern nightmare encoun-
ters, victims reported that it was either the Devil or, more commonly, a witch assaulting
them in the night. However, in stories of accused witches reporting nightmare encounters, we
see a distinctly different belief: that devils could lie on potential witches as part of a process
of demonic temptation and transformation. In this article I will argue that these nightmare
encounters represented a physical manifestation of an internal struggle against Satan. In doing
so I will revisit and reinterpret current scholarship on the nightmare and reinforce the impor-
tance of the demonic in English witchcraft belief.

keywords
devil, night, nightmare, early modern, England, witchcraft

In 1625 Jane Hott was awakened one night by a “thing like a hedghog” sitting on her
breast.1 This hedgehog, a strange creature that was “as soft as a Cat,” lay heavily on
her until Jane struck it off with her hand.2 In her 1645 confession for witchcraft, Jane
related that this creature had visited her once or twice a month for twenty years and
that each time it lay on her she struck it away. In a much earlier confession, from
1589, another accused witch outlined a similar nighttime experience. In her exam-
ination, Joan Prentice described how her familiar spirit, a ferret called Bidd who
introduced himself as “Satan,” regularly appeared to her at night as she was going to
bed and sucked blood from her body.3 Another confession, this time from a Mrs.
Evans in 1705, described how “two little black Things, almost like Moles,” came into
her bed and sucked her.4 Although Mrs. Evans had been considering turning to

preternature, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2018

Copyright © 2018 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa.
 cha r lot te - ro se m ill ar 15 5

witchcraft, her ­experience with these “imps” so terrified her that she sent for the
minister and prayed until the creatures disappeared. For all three of these women,
these experiences took place before they had made a pact with the Devil. What are
we to make of these encounters? All three reports describe the Devil, or demon-
like creatures, in the shape of a familiar spirit, appearing to potential witches during
the night. The confessions of Joan Prentice and Mrs. Evans describe familiar spirits
appearing in the night—a reflection of an early modern emphasis on the Devil’s
increased presence after sundown. Jane Hott’s narrative, while still reflecting this
fear, is also one of a small number of “nightmare” encounters that appear in English
witchcraft pamphlets. In early modern England, the night was widely believed to
be a time when the Devil was at his most active and most dangerous. Yet, because
of a lack of focus on the role of the Devil in English witchcraft, the implications of
this belief for English witchcraft studies has yet to be fully explored. In this article,
I will focus on printed depictions of nighttime encounters with diabolic forces as
symptoms of the belief that the Devil was more active and dangerous in the night
and that he used this time to tempt potential witches away from God and into his
clutches. This analysis highlights the crucial role of the Devil in English witchcraft
narratives and the early modern preoccupation with the night as a time of demonic
temptation.
Throughout this piece, I use the term “nightmare” in the premodern sense,
that is, to describe a belief that supernatural beings could sit on or “ride” their
victims in the night, a phenomenon that some scholars have argued should be
viewed as akin to modern-day sleep paralysis.5 In most typical early modern
nightmare encounters, victims reported that it was either the Devil or, more
commonly, a witch pressing heavily on them in the night. However, in stories
of accused witches reporting nightmare encounters, we see a distinctly different
belief: a belief that devils could lie on potential witches as part of a process of
demonic temptation and transformation. I argue that, for accused witches and
the pamphleteers who immortalized them in print, nightmare encounters rep-
resented a physical manifestation of an internal struggle against Satan. These
encounters will be firmly placed within a broader understanding of the night as
the Devil’s domain. In so doing, I will nuance current scholarship on the night-
mare and reinforce the importance of the demonic in English witchcraft belief.
Until recently, English witchcraft was viewed historiographically as a pre-
dominantly nondiabolical, malefic activity. This view, most famously devel-
oped by Keith Thomas and Alan Macfarlane in the 1970s but dating to the
very beginnings of modern witchcraft scholarship, drew a distinction between
English witchcraft and its Scottish and European equivalents by claiming
1 56 pr et e r natur e

that demonic familiars and other diabolical elements were not, in the words
of Thomas, “the staple constituents of English witch-trials.”6 Authors such as
Thomas, Macfarlane, Kittredge, Ewen, and Notestein did, of course, acknowl-
edge the Devil’s role and did not dismiss it entirely; rather, they significantly
downplayed it in favor of a focus on village relationships, maleficium, and social
tensions—all crucial contributions to modern witchcraft scholarship. But it
was not until the 1990s that concerted efforts were made to understand exactly
how the role of the Devil manifested in English witchcraft trials.7 Since this
decade much work, notably that by James Sharpe, Malcolm Gaskill, and Debo-
rah Willis, has attempted a reappraisal of the Devil’s role in English witchcraft,
leading one historian to comment that “it is becoming evident that the charac-
terization of English witchcraft as non-demonological has been overdrawn.”8
The truth of this statement is especially evident if we focus on witchcraft pam-
phlets. Of the sixty-six witchcraft pamphlets published over the entire period
of state-­sanctioned witchcraft accusations in England (1563–1735), only three
fail to mention a witch’s reliance on the Devil to help inflict maleficium.9 Of
the remaining sixty-three pamphlets, all but five represent the Devil as a famil-
iar spirit—a small, tangible, domestic, or common animal who formed a pact
with the witch.10 This creature has been labeled “a small household-demon,”11
“a privately owned Devil in animal form,”12 and an “incarnation of the Devil.”13
Through a closer examination of several of these narratives, it becomes clear
that the Devil, often in the form of a familiar spirit, was believed to play a key
role in English witchcraft.14 Here I explore just one small facet of the Devil’s
role in English witchcraft narratives: his powers of nighttime attack, tempta-
tion, and transformation.

dangers of the night

The Devil’s attempts at nighttime temptation and transformation were by no

means confined to nightmare encounters, and a wide range of early modern
sources highlight how men and women came to fear the Devil’s presence in the
night. Witchcraft pamphlets describe the Devil’s powers of nighttime tempta-
tion, the Devil’s propensity to attack in the night, and the belief that witches
worked with the Devil under cover of darkness. As scholars have long recog-
nized, the night has widely been viewed as a metaphor for evil.15 Although links
between the night, fear, danger, and the supernatural were not confined to the
early modern period, it was during this time that these anxieties reached their
 cha r lot te - ro se m ill ar 15 7

peak. Roger Ekirch’s evocative description of the night air as the earthly domain
of spirits resonates strongly with early modern ideas about the Devil and the
supernatural.16 Intensified during the early modern period was not just the
belief in the Devil’s increased presence at night but, also, his attempts to tempt
men and women away from God. Moreover, the intense and growing Protes-
tant preoccupation with nighttime temptation was peculiar to the early mod-
ern experience.17 Nighttime attempts at demonic temptation stemmed from a
culture in which the night was thought of as “a time when temptation was at its
greatest.”18 In short, although fears of the night as the space for diabolical temp-
tation predated the early modern period, it was during this time that these fears
were amplified. According to Craig Koslofsky, “there is a distinctive early mod-
ern emphasis on the night as a site of temptation and surrender to the forces of
darkness.”19 He argues that “the reformation of popular culture beginning in the
sixteenth century challenged the nuanced folk view of the night with an inten-
sified linkage of the night with infernal evil, diabolical temptation, and human
sin. On stage, in learned demonology, and in countless confessions of witchcraft,
the night became the time when women and men made themselves culpable
and became the Devil’s own.”20 Matthew Beaumont has also stressed the grow-
ing links between temptation and the night in the early modern world, arguing
that “increasingly in the Protestant imagination, the night and its agents, which
included witches as well as spectres, became associated with temptation and
spiritual darkness.”21
In 1594 the English pamphleteer, playwright, and poet Thomas Nashe asked,
“When hath the devil commonly first appeared unto any man but in the night?”22
For Nashe, the night was the time when the Devil was at his most active and
most dangerous. As Koslofsky has explained, Nashe was not overly concerned
with the Devil’s physical assaults; rather, it was the dangers of spiritual tempta-
tion that one needed to fear.23 Nashe was obviously not alone in his fear of the
night. The famous witchcraft sceptic Reginald Scot, a contemporary of Nashe,
despaired over the common people’s fears of supernatural entities and high-
lighted the strong association between nighttime and the demonic: “some never
feare the divell, but in a darke night”;24 Scot here refers not to his own fears but
to what he views as the superstitions of the populace at large. Nor was this fear
isolated to the late sixteenth century. Thomas Ady, writing seventy years later,
described how the Devil “walketh in the Dark nights.”25 According to Pierre de
Lancre, the Devil most preferred the time “when the blackest curtains of the
night are drawn.”26 In early modern England, the Devil was viewed as a key
manifestation of the dangers of the night.
1 58 pr et e r natur e

The above authors all made explicit links between darkness and the Devil.
This fearful association can also be tracked through early modern attitudes
toward sleep and prayer. Compounding many people’s fear of the night was the
understanding that sleep was a dangerous time, a time when the body and the
soul were at their most vulnerable. When preparing for bed, early modern Eng-
lish Protestants were confronted both with the dangers of the night and the
dangers of sleep. These dangers took both physical and spiritual form. As Alec
Ryrie explains, “Going to sleep in the early modern world was dangerous. The
prayer ‘If I should die before I wake’ nowadays has a quaint feel to it. For our
forebears, it was clear-eyed realism. Death often came in the night, whether
from disease, household accident, fire, violence or simply from cold.”27 To pro-
tect themselves from the dangers of the night, both early modern Catholics and
Protestants performed a number of bedtime rituals, and as Sasha Handley has
demonstrated, bedtime prayers as late as the eighteenth century still expressed
disquiet about the potential dangers to be met in sleep.28 These dangers, when
combined with the knowledge that the Devil was more active at night, caused
extreme anxiety and fear in many early modern men and women. As one
­sixteenth-century author warned, during the night devout Christians needed
to guard against “the craftes & assaultes of the wicked enemy.”29 Another pam-
phleteer in 1613 explained how imps (familiars) regularly appeared at night since
“night is the instrument to contrive their wicked purposes.”30 For these authors,
the night was the Devil’s domain.
It is clear that the early modern period saw a rise in the association between
the night and demonic temptation. Yet the long-standing historiographical ten-
dency to underplay the role of the Devil in English witchcraft studies means
that the links between the night, demonic temptation, and witchcraft remain
understudied in an English context. English witchcraft pamphlets provide val-
uable insights into fear of the demonic night and, in turn, nuance our under-
standing of the Devil’s role in English witchcraft belief.31
Concerns about the Devil’s nighttime powers are evident in a number of
English witchcraft pamphlets. Many victims of witchcraft found themselves
attacked in the night: the young John Selles, for example, was dragged yelling
out of bed by his leg in the night by a “black thinge” that took the shape of his
sister. His father described it as an imp.32 Another victim of witchcraft, Richard
Galis, related that “about twelve a clock in the night a shadowe of a huge and
mightie black Cat appeered in my Chamber [and] approached neer my bed-
side.”33 Richard was so terrified by this apparition that it made “my here [hair]
to stand upright, my hart to faint, and my paines more and more to encrease.”34
 cha r lot te - ro se m ill ar 15 9

As the night went on, Richard was “left tumbling and tossing in my bed, more
like to die than any longer to live, my sheets wringing wet with sweat caused
through this suddain feare.”35 It was not until Richard recalled a tale his brother
had told him that he realized that the cat must be a witch or “of some Witches
sending,” at which point he immediately, “with the brackish teares distilling
from the fountaines of my eyes,” began to pray, and, as the night ebbed, his fears
began to disappear.36 This extraordinary first-person narration highlights sev-
eral things. First, that familiars were believed to attack in the night, specifically
around midnight, a time considered liminal and thus dangerous; second, that
this could (not surprisingly) cause extreme fear in victims, and third, that prayer
and faith in God could help protect from these demonic terrors.
Another tale of demonic attack comes from 1652. Giles Fenderyn is accused
of making a “covenant with the Devil for 14 years [which was] written with the
bloud of his two fore-fingers.”37 During this time Giles murdered his wife. He was
apprehended after his demonic covenant expired. After his apprehension, Giles
was sitting up in prison with three men when, about midnight, he experienced a
strange sight: “There was such a thundering in the chimney, as if there had been a
drum beating: whereupon one Rob Bull looked out of the window, and saw a man
to his thinking walk up & down in the Ward-yard . . . and being Moon-light  . . . he
could perfectly discern the proportion of a man; save only it had neither head nor
armes.”38 On seeing this apparition, one of the men said, “Certainly this is a famil-
iar.”39 The following night Giles was sitting up with three different men when, at
midnight, another apparition appeared, this time “in the shape and likeness of a
Dog, who leapt up on the said Giles: but he renounced it, saying, ‘Avoid Sathan.’”40
In an earlier encounter, Giles wards off another apparition that again appears at
midnight, this time in the shape of a bishop, with the words “if you come from the
Devil, I do renounce you.”41 In yet another encounter, Giles is again “visited with
some evil Spirits or Familiars about 12 of the clock” at night, yet no one else could
see them.42 In all of these encounters, demonic apparitions appear to attack their
targets at exactly midnight and need to be vocally warded off.
Witchcraft pamphlets not only highlight how men and women could be
attacked by demonic forces in the night, they also provide many examples of
witches engaging in nefarious activities under cover of darkness, thus associat-
ing witchcraft with the demonic and the nighttime. In Ursley Kempe’s trial for
witchcraft, for example, her son testified that his mother’s spirits normally came
to suck blood from her in the night.43 Another accused witch, Alice Huson, tes-
tified that her spirits sucked her from “Supper-time, til after Cock-crowing.”44
One male witch related, very strangely, that he regularly left his marital bed in
160 pr et e r nature

the night, lay in front of a fire, and allowed his six snail familiars (Sydrake, Jeffry,
Peter, Ayleward, Sacara, and Pyman) to suck blood from his side.45 Another
male witch recounted how, although the Devil first approached him in the day,
his familiars visit him every twenty-four hours, “most commonly by night.”46 In
these narratives, witchcraft is an activity that has been regulated to darkness
specifically because of its demonic nature. Underlying all of these narratives is
not just the fear of the Devil but the fear of demonic temptation. Returning to
Nashe, we see this fear articulated: “In the quiet silence of the night [the Devil]
will be sure to surprize us, when he unfalliby knows we shall be unarmed to
resist, and that there will be full auditorie granted him to undermine or per-
swade what he lists.”47
Early modern English witchcraft pamphlets are riddled with references to
the Devil’s powers of nighttime temptation. This was a time when witches sent
their familiars to harm their neighbors and when these same demonic creatures
approached potential witches to lure them away from God. Take, for example,
the case of Anne Whittle, a woman accused of witchcraft in 1612. On the 19th of
May, Anne confessed that fourteen years ago, through the wicked persuasions
of Elizabeth Sowtherns (another accused witch), she entered into a pact with
Satan.48 According to Anne, soon after she agreed to become a witch “the Devill
appeared unto her in the liknes of a Man, about midnight . . . whereupon the
said wicked Spirit mooved [Anne], that she would become his Subject, and give
her Soul, unto him.”49 In a later examination, Anne calls her devil Fancie and
claims that “in Summer last, save one, the said Devill, or Fancie, came unto [her]
in the night time, and at diverse and sundry times in the likenesse of a Beare.”50
In this account, the Devil’s first, and most important, appearance is at midnight,
and he later reappears during the night.
The appearance of the Devil in the night, often at midnight, was a popular
trope in English witchcraft narratives and, as we shall see, one that contributed
to a belief in the Devil’s appearance as a nightmare encounter to tempt potential
men and women away from God and into the clutches of Satan.

the nightmare: symptoms, causes, cures

So, what exactly was a nightmare encounter? Since the late 1960s, a number
of key works have emerged on the nightmare, linking it to modern-day sleep
paralysis and labeling it a “panhuman” phenomenon.51 This is reflected in the
general consensus among historians of the nightmare that the experience and
 cha r lot te - ro se m ill ar 161

symptoms are universal but the interpretation is culturally constructed.52 Those

suffering from a nightmare encounter were likely to experience a feeling of pres-
sure or weight, often on the chest (this is integral to the nightmare encounter);
a feeling of a presence; a sense of being fully awake but appearing to others to be
asleep; keen awareness of physical surroundings; paralysis or very limited mobil-
ity; fear, often terror; psychic, visual, or aural hallucinations; and fear of death.
The nightmare was also most likely to occur when the victims were sleeping
in the supine position, that is, on their back.53 Modern studies have identified
this phenomenon as sleep paralysis, a condition that occurs when REM sleep
(a phase of sleep characterized by the suppression of muscle activity and rapid
eye movement) intrudes on moments of waking or falling asleep. As such, the
nightmare most commonly occurs at the moment of falling asleep or waking.54
Fear seems to have been one of the most overwhelming symptoms of the night-
mare. One eighteenth-century sufferer was “so much afraid of [the nightmare’s]
intolerable insults” that he slept all night in a chair, “rather than give [the night-
mare] an opportunity of attacking [him] in an horizontal position.”55 Another
victim “imagin’d the Devil came to his bedside, seiz’d him by the Throat, and
endeavour’d to choak him. Next day he observ’d the black impressions of his
hard Fingers on his Neck.”56 As a result of these encounters, this man made his
servant watch over him at night so that he would wake him and thus “rescue him
from the Paws of Satan.”57 The fear in these descriptions is palpable and, in both
cases, the sufferers imagine the nightmare as a tangible beast that can hurt them
and, in turn, be physically warded off. In early modern witchcraft narratives, this
fear manifested as terror at a belief in the Devil’s presence.
Both of the above sufferers attempted a cure for the nightmare: one avoided
lying on his back, the other employed a servant to wake him if he became
afflicted. A number of explanations were put forth for what caused the night-
mare, why it affected some and not others, and whether it was caused by some-
thing natural, such as overindulgence, leading to the disruption of the blood
supply to the brain, or supernatural, such as a witch, a devil, or other supernat-
ural entity. In his 1584 Discoverie of Witchcraft, the witchcraft sceptic Reginald
Scot expressed his views:

This incubus is a bodile disease . . . although it extend unto the trouble

of the mind: which in some is called The mare, oppressing manie in their
sleepe so sore, as they are not able to call for helpe, or stir themselves
under the burthen of that heavie humor, which is ingendered of a thicke
vapor proceeding from the cruditie and rawnesse in the stomach: which
162 pr et e r nature

ascending up into the head oppresseth the braine, in so much as manie are
much infeebled thereby, as being nightlie haunted therewith.58

As we see from the above, the “night-mare” and the “incubus” were terms that
could be used interchangeably. As William F. MacLehose has argued, by the
late fifteenth century the concept of the incubus had become associated with
that of the old hag, or nightmare.59 Scot went on to explain how lying on one’s
side instead of in the supine position could effect an instant cure, as could being
awoken (both cures attempted above by eighteenth-century sufferers). Although
Scot records numerous charms and other magical cures for warding off the night-
mare, he scoffs at the concept that this is anything other than a natural disease.60
Instead, he endorses the common educated belief that the nightmare could be
caused by sleeping on a full stomach.61 This medical theory argued that some of
the symptoms of the nightmare, such as visions and immobility, were caused by
gastric disturbances affecting blood supply.62 John Bond, a later author, doctor,
and nightmare sufferer, suggested another theory, claiming in the mid-eighteenth
century that this “Monster of the night” was caused by “the pressure of the Heart
on the left or inferior Auricle and Pulmonary Veins, which stops the motion of
the Blood through the Lungs, and occasions a general stagnation.”63 Explana-
tions for the nightmare were not inflexible. Even Bond, a doctor, who dismissed
the idea that the nightmare was demonic or supernatural, still personified it as
a living, monstrous thing that attacked him mercilessly throughout his life. Nor
did a medical explanation preclude supernatural intervention. Owen Davies has
already offered one example of this from a 1728 copy of the Athenean Mercury:

Q: Whether there’s any such thing as a hag, which the common people
fancy to be witch-riding, when they are in their beds in the night time,
and, as some say, when they are perfectly awake, and with such a vehe-
mency that they are not able to stir either hand or foot, or move the least
member of their bodies, nor can utter one word distinctly, but make a
kind of grumbling noise? If in the affirmative, what instance meet you
with it in history? If in the negative, what is it that is the cause of it?

A: ’Tis effected both ways, by vapours from crude and undigested con-
coctions, heat or blood, as after hard drinking, and several other natural
ways; but sometimes ’tis really effected by witches, which first gave the
name to the common oppression in sleep called the night-mare: History
is full of such instances.64
 cha r lot te - ro se m ill ar 163

In short, there was not one clear way to interpret a nightmare encounter.
Although numerous medical explanations for the nightmare were offered
throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, in popular
belief the nightmare remained firmly supernatural.
Additionally, in popular belief the nightmare was most frequently associated
with the assaults of witches and demonic beings. For many, particularly those
living in the sixteenth century, an assault by the “mare” was known as being
“hag-ridden” and was believed to stem from an attack by a witch.65 As Davies has
elegantly articulated, the nightmare was viewed as a “physical manifestation of
witchcraft.”66 For those who awoke, unable to move, to find themselves straddled
by a person they suspected to be a witch, nightmare encounters provided “incon-
trovertible proof ” of the very real power of witches.67 We can see one instance of
this interpretation in a 1693 pamphlet in which Alice Huson, a woman accused of
witchcraft in 1664, confessed that she “did ride” her victim.68 For other sufferers,
the nightmare presented itself as a demonic apparition. The puritan Robert Nor-
wood, for instance, recorded in the 1640s that he was so afraid of these encounters
that he has “sometimes taken a naked knife in [his] hand when [he] went to sleep,
thinking to strike at it.”69 For Norwood, these demonic apparitions appeared as
hares or cats on his breast or belly.70 Another victim of the nightmare, Margret
Byrom, also experienced it as a demonic apparition:

It was usuall also with the spirit to come in the night in the likenes of
a blacke man with half a face, which tooke her just as she was going to
bed & would be sure to picke her backwarde: and shee being recovered
and got into her bed, it would come and sit upon the toppe of her head,
holding his 4 fingers upon her forehead verie heavie, holding her verie
strait, that she could not see nor stirre, yet for all that was her kirchefe and
her headgeare pulled of, and though they had tyed it up, & bound it on
verie fast, yet suddenlie in a moment he pluckt all asunder, and her haure
that was so fast tyed up, was broken loose, and brought about her eares,
and this was tryed twice or thrice in a night . . . and ever when he tooke
his leave and departed, his maner was to give her a great thumpe on the
hunder part of her heade, insomuch that with those thumpes she felt her
head sore a good while after.71

This incident was just one of many occasions on which Margret was attacked in
her bed by devilish spirits—although the reason that her assailant appeared as
a “blacke man with half a face” remains unclear. She was also violently thrown
164 pr et e r natur e

around her room and her bed by a spirit appearing as a black cat, a black dog, a
big mouse, and once, when she was lying in bed, “a terrible vision . . . like a fowle
blacke dwarfe with halfe a face, longe shagged haire, blacke broad handes, &
black cloven feete,” which appeared to her and only left after she prayed to the
Lord for help.72 This creature was described as “Sathan.”73 In the above descrip-
tion, Margret explains how the black man with half a face lay on her and held
her down very heavily so that she was unable to move, a description reminiscent
of a nightmare encounter. For Margret, the nightmare took demonic, tangible
form, and her attacker resembled a deformed black man.
Owen Davies, Robin Briggs, and Lyndal Roper have all highlighted night-
mare encounters in which victims were attacked in the night by a witch or a
demonic familiar supposedly acting on the witch’s behalf.74 These encounters, as
Davies in particular has shown, exist strongly in English witchcraft. However,
for men and women accused of witchcraft who experienced nightmare encoun-
ters, theirs was one of physical temptation by Satan, not one of maleficium by a
neighborhood witch. Whereas some men and women interpreted their night-
mare encounters as attacks by witches, for witches or potential witches who
experienced the nightmare, this encounter represented a physical manifestation
of demonic temptation.

the witch’s nightmare

In this section, I will explore three examples from English witchcraft pam-
phlets in which witches describe their experience of demonic temptation in the
form of a nightmare encounter. In two of these three narratives, we find that
the accused were not “witches” at the time of their nightmare experience; that
is, they had not yet made a pact with the Devil and turned away from God.
We can view these encounters as reflections of accused witches’ anxieties about
demonic temptation (a trial that was particularly likely to occur at night) and of
pamphleteers’ preoccupations with the night as a time of diabolical temptation
and the importance of resisting the Devil’s advances. The first example concerns
Jane Hott, a widow, who was executed for witchcraft in Faversham, Kent in
1645. Her examination, mentioned at the opening of this article, hints strongly
at a nightmare encounter:

A thing like a hedgehog had usually visited her, and came to her a great
while agoe, about twenty yeares agoe, and that if it sucked her it was in her
 cha r lot te - ro se m ill ar 16 5

sleep, and the paine thereof awaked her, and it came to her once or twice
in the moneth and sucked her, and when it lay upon her breast she struck
it off with her hand, and that it was as soft as a Cat.75

The appearance of Jane’s hedgehog seems to be a regular occurrence; but it only

occasionally attempts to lie on her chest. Jane is clearly relating an experience
that, for her, had a tangible, physical element. This creature also sucked her in
her sleep. Demonic familiars sucking blood from witches was one of the hall-
marks of the demonic pact in early modern England.76 However, Jane does not
recount entering into a pact with the Devil; rather, this hedgehog appears in the
night and sucks her in her sleep, an act that awakens her. Jane’s retelling of this
nonconsensual act could suggest that her encounter with this creature, which
at times appears to share elements with a nightmare encounter, was part of a
process of demonic attack and temptation in the night. Jane later, after failing
the swimming test, confesses to being in league with the Devil.77
A second confession from 1645 provides more evidence of these themes. Joan
Cariden, also a widow accused of witchcraft, claimed that about three-quarters
of a year before she was arrested, “as she was in the bed about twelve or one of the
clocke in the night there lay a rugged soft thing upon her bosome which was very
soft, and she thrust if off with her hand.”78 Joan related that, after this encounter,
she felt that “God forsook her, for she could never pray so well since as she could
before.”79 Joan also adds that she “verily thinks” that the creature was alive.80 In
her second examination, Joan relates an earlier nighttime meeting: “The Divell
came to her in the shape of a black rugged Dog, in the night time, and crept into
the bed to her, and spake to her in mumbling language; The next night it came to
her againe, and required this examinant to deny God and leane to him, and that
then he would revenge her of any one she owed ill will to, and thereupon this
examinant promised him her soule upon those conditions.81” Joan claims that
this encounter happened “in the same yeere that the Major [Mayor] was for-
merly Major,” which Malcolm Gaskill has dated to 1635.82 On this occasion, Joan
gives into demonic temptation and gives her soul to the Devil in return for the
power to avenge herself against those who have wronged her. In both encoun-
ters, the Devil chooses to approach Joan in the night, in her bed. In the first
encounter, Joan specifically notes the timing of her ordeal: around midnight.
Both Joan and Jane are visited by familiars at night, in their beds and, if their
familiars lie on their breasts, they strike them away violently. Both of these nar-
ratives come from the same pamphlet of 1645, which, of course, makes it diffi-
cult to draw wide-ranging conclusions. We do, though, have a third example of a
166 pr et e r nature

possible nightmare encounter, which comes from an earlier pamphlet, this time
from James Device, one of the infamous Pendle witches described in Thomas
Potts’s 1613 pamphlet.83
Both James’s mother, Elizabeth Device, and his grandmother, Elizabeth
Sowtherns, were tried for witchcraft, as was his sister Alizon Device and many
other members of his family. In Potts’s account of the case, James first appears as
a passive observer of and unwilling participant in his family’s witchcraft. He has
supposedly been taught witchcraft by both his mother and grandmother, and
although he sees their familiars, he attempts to ignore them. It is under these
circumstances that he explains how a creature appeared to him: “About mid-
night . . . there came a thing, and lay upon him very heavily about an houre, and
went then from him out of his Chamber window, coloured blacke, and about
the bignesse of a Hare or Catte.”84 As in the confessions from Joan and Jane,
James also recalls the feeling of something heavy pressing on his chest in the
night. So, how are we to interpret these encounters? In Janine Rivière’s recent
study of the nightmare, she explains how the nightmare generally manifested
in English narratives. As Rivière reminds us, the majority of nightmare assaults
appear in witchcraft trials and are part of the “hag-riding” tradition. In these
records, Rivière argues, witches and their demonic familiars were believed to
assault their victims supernaturally while they slept by creeping onto their
paralyzed bodies to suffocate and “ride” them.85 Although these accounts are
prominent in English witchcraft trials, the above three cases highlight a differ-
ent belief: that the Devil chose to send familiar spirits to tempt ordinary men
and women into joining with Satan and becoming witches. These nightmare
narratives took place against a background of belief in the Devil’s penchant for
nighttime temptation, in a world in which the Devil was more likely to attack
during the night. After their encounters with the nightmare, Joan, Jane, and
James all gave in to Satan and made a pact with him. In these encounters, the
nightmare symbolizes an internal struggle with Satan, a trial described as taking
place in the depths of the night.

interpreting the nightmare, the devil, and

the dangers of the night

Thus far, I have explored the links among the Devil, demonic temptation and
attack, the night, and nightmare narratives. I have suggested that accounts
that appear to share elements of a “nightmare” encounter provide further
 cha r lot te - ro se m ill ar 167

evidence of the early modern association between the Devil and nighttime
temptation. After examining nightmare encounters against a background of
the night as a dangerous, demonic zone, I argue that three key linked themes
stand out: the representation of the Devil as animal; the link between night-
time and nightmare encounters with the Devil and fear; and the significance
of midnight in all of these examples. In this final section, I will demon-
strate how looking at these three themes in both nighttime and nightmare
encounters can help nuance our understanding of early modern belief in the
­Devil’s role in the night, as well as reinforce the Devil’s importance in English
­witchcraft narratives.
In the confessions of James Device, Joan Cariden, and Jane Hott, their
demonic apparition appears either as a misshapen and unnamable “thing” or as
a demonic animal. This is still the case when we revisit the statements of victims
of witchcraft, such as those by Margret Byrom and Robert Norwood. Even
Norwood, a Puritan, does not adhere to the theological understanding of the
nightmare as a demonic incubus or succubus.86 Rather, like the accused witches
Jane Hott, Joan Cariden, and James Device, he visualizes the Devil as a famil-
iar spirit. If we return to his description, we see that his demonic apparitions
took the form of cats or hares on his belly.87 Norwood was so terrified of these
small creatures that he went to bed with a knife.88 Margret Byrom, a young girl
from a Puritan household, also visualized her demonic assailants as animals,
describing one as “a greate blacke dog, with open mouth, & the greatest chaine
that ever she saw,” another as a “bigg blacke Cat, with verie fearefull broad eyes,
which came staring her in the face,” and another as “a big Mouse, leaping upon
her knee.”89 The various descriptions of the nightmare as animal reinforce the
centrality of familiar spirits in early modern England. As noted above, belief
in the familiar spirit was common in early modern England. Like nightmare
encounters themselves, beliefs about familiars represent a melding of popular
and learned belief. The small, tangible familiar spirit was almost unrecognizable
from the Devil described by early modern demonologists; but at the same time,
witches were believed to enter into pacts with these creatures—thus giving their
souls to Satan—and use them to perform malefic magic on their neighbors.
In nightmare encounters, we see another way in which belief in the familiar
spirit nuanced ideas about the Devil. As Janine Rivière has noted, nightmare
encounters in witchcraft accounts demonstrate “the discrepancies between
learned demonology and witchcraft belief,” as accounts of the nightmare in Eng-
lish witchcraft accounts described them as nighttime assaults by witches and
their familiars rather than by incubi or succubi.90 By imagining the nightmare
168 pr et e r nature

as a small, demonic animal rather than a demonic incubus, early modern men
and women demonstrated their belief in the prevalence and primacy of familiar
spirits as the form the Devil was most likely to assume.
Another common thread that flows through both nightmare narratives and
encounters with the Devil in the night is fear. We have already encountered
examples of the extreme fear that the nightmare could induce, such as the man
who sat upright all night in a chair or the Puritan who went to bed with a
knife.91 The terror induced by the nightmare comes through both implicitly and
explicitly in the confessions of Jane Hott, Joan Cariden, and James Device. For
Joan, the thing that sat on her chest was not described, but given her revulsion
and inability to pray after its appearance, its demonic nature is implied. For
Jane, her oppressor appeared as a thing like a hedgehog that was as soft as a cat,
a description reminiscent of many of the stranger familiar forms that became
typical during the 1640s. If we return to James Device’s description, there seems
little doubt that he was tormented by the Devil in the form of a familiar. By the
time James describes the black thing “about the bignesse of a Hare or Catte”
lying heavily on him, he has already, according to his examination, encountered
both his mother and grandmother’s familiar spirits.92 James claims that he was
tormented by one of his grandmother’s familiars in the shape of a hare. In his
examination, James says that his grandmother told him to steal communion
from church. He eats it instead. On leaving church, a thing “in the shape of a
Hare” appeared and “asked him whether hee had brought the Bread that his
Grand mother had bidden him, or no?”93 When James replied that he had not,
the hare “threatned to pull this Examinate to peeces, and so this Examinate
thereupon marked himselfe to God, and so the said thing vanished.”94 James’s
resistance to the Devil lasted only so long, and he did eventually make a pact
with the Devil, who at first appears as a brown dog and, later, as a black dog
called Dandy.95 James uses these spirits to kill two people.96
James’s narrative makes it clear that he fears the Devil, as do both Jane and
Joan’s accounts of striking the Devil from their chests. This fear needs to be
understood within the broader context of early modern witchcraft narratives.
Although a witch’s relationship with the Devil was believed to be multifaceted—
and could often be defined by malice, hatred, a desire for vengeance, or even
love—fear was present in many witchcraft narratives, particularly on a potential
witch’s first encounter with the Devil.97 While most if not all pamphleteers con-
demned accused witches for ever consenting to an agreement with the Devil,
some did include details of a witch’s struggle against Satan. The pamphlet about
accused witch Elizabeth Bennet, for example, recounted how she was tormented
 cha r lot te - ro se m ill ar 169

by familiar spirits to such an extent that, after her continual refusals, they tried
to thrust her into a burning oven. This assault left a physical burn on Elizabeth’s
arm.98 Another accused, Elizabeth Sawyer, claimed that she originally confessed
to a pact with the Devil only out of fear. Elizabeth’s interrogator and author
of the pamphlet about her life was a godly minister and ordinary to Newgate
named Henry Goodcole, who made a point of asking Elizabeth whether or not
she feared the Devil. Elizabeth replied “I was in very greate feare, when I saw the
Divell.”99 Another accused, the aptly named Mary Trembles, told her examiner
that the Devil “did frighten her.”100 Several accused, including Elizabeth Sawyer,
mentioned that the Devil threatened to tear them to pieces if they refused to
hurt a neighbor or told anyone of their relationship.101 These expressions of fear
are rare in English witchcraft pamphlets; more common is an emphasis on the
witch’s malicious and vengeful nature.102 These narratives then, especially when
combined with stories of nightmare encounters, provide a rare glimpse into the
very real fear that many accused witches felt, or were believed to feel, toward the
Devil. Rivière has recently argued that “in the history of dreams, the nightmare
can be understood as the dark ‘other’ of the dream, offering us glimpses into the
terrifying fears and anxieties of past people.”103 As stories of victims accusing
witches of “riding” them provide insight into fears of witchcraft in early modern
Europe, these narratives allow a reconsideration of this story and demonstrate
the fear that some accused witches felt toward the Devil. For Joan, the Devil
sitting on her chest was her first encounter with a demonic creature, and it was
clearly unwelcome. For James, the nightmare was just one of the many ways in
which he felt tormented by devils. For these men and women, the sensation of
a physical devil lying on them may have represented a physical manifestation of
their internal struggle with Satan. These fearful encounters stem from a culture
in which the night was understood as a dangerous time of demonic temptation.
The nightmare encounters that so disturbed James Device, Jane Hott, and Joan
Cariden can be viewed, then, as extreme examples of a belief that the Devil
came to tempt men and women at night.
One final point worth discussing is the symbolism of midnight in all three
of these nightmare encounters and, indeed, in many of the above descriptions
of the Devil appearing to men and women in the night.104 In early modern
­England, midnight was understood as a liminal, transitory space, a time at
which the soul could draw closer to God, but also a time at which the Devil
might strike.105 Two of the three nightmare encounters discussed here (those of
Joan Cariden and James Device) occurred at midnight. As we have seen above,
midnight was also referred to in a number of non-nightmare encounters with
1 70 pr et e r natur e

the Devil as a time in the night when the temptations of the Devil seemed
­particularly dangerous. Although it is possible that these men and women knew
it was midnight through a church bell or other signal, it is also possible that
midnight is being used as a synonym for what is described in one narration as
“the dead of the night.”106 Early modern men and women understood midnight
as a liminal space/time in which the Devil was most likely to appear. For these
men and women, an unnatural encounter in the night was first assumed to be
demonic and then assumed to occur at midnight—the time when the Devil was
particularly active.
Our understanding of early modern nightmare narratives, by taking into
consideration some hitherto unexamined details, places these encounters
firmly within an early modern understanding of the night as a dangerous
time of demonic attack. Moreover, consideration of these details draws new
attention to the strong role of the Devil in English witchcraft, particularly
how he was believed to make his presence known in the night: while victims
of witches did believe that the Devil could attack them in the night, potential
and accused witches themselves also feared the Devil’s presence—and this
fear could manifest in nightmare encounters. Such considerations allow a
more nuanced understanding of the role of the nightmare in witchcraft nar-
ratives, the importance of the Devil to English witchcraft stories, and how
men and women imagined the night as a time for diabolical temptation and
transformation.

charlotte-rose millar is a research fellow in the Institute for Advanced

Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland and an associate
investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions
(1100–1800). Her book Witchcraft, The Devil and Emotions in Early Modern
England was published by Routledge in 2017. She is also the author of numerous
works on witchcraft, diabolism, emotions, and sexual practices in early modern
England and has won two prizes for her published work.

n ot e s

A shorter version of this article was presented in May 2016 at the symposium “Supernatural
Spaces in the Early Modern World,” held at the John Rylands Library, Manchester. I am
grateful to the conveners Jenny Spinks and Sasha Handley, and to all the participants for
their thoughts on my original paper. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of Preter-
nature for their comments.
 cha r lot te - ro se m ill ar 17 1

1. The examination, confession, triall, and execution of Joane Williford, Joan Cariden, Jane
Hott: who were executed at Feversham in Kent, for being witches, on Munday the 29 of September,
1645 (London: Printed for J. G., 1645), 4.
2. Ibid.
3. The apprehension and confession of three notorious witches (London: Printed by E. Allde,
1589), sig. B1 v–B2 r.
4. Ralph Davis, An Account of the Trials, Examination and Condemnation of Elinor Shaw,
and Mary Phillip’s (Two Notorious Witches) (London: Printed for F. Thorn, 1705), 4.
5. See Owen Davies, “The Nightmare Experience, Sleep Paralysis, and Witchcraft Accusa-
tions,” Folklore 114, no. 4 (2003): 1–29; Owen Davies,“Hag-Riding in Nineteenth-Century West
Country England and Modern Newfoundland: An Examination of An ­Experience-Centred
Witchcraft Tradition,” Folklife 35, no. 1 (1997): 36–53; David J. Hufford, “A New Approach to
the ‘Old Hag’: The Nightmare Tradition Reexamined,” in American Folk Medicine, ed. Way-
land D. Hand, 73–85 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); Sam C. Liddon, “Sleep
Paralysis and Hypnagogic Hallucinations,” Archives of General Psychiatry 17 (1967): 88–96;
Robert C. Ness, “The Old Hag Phenomenon as Sleep Paralysis: A Biocultural Interpretation,”
in The Culture-Bound Syndromes, ed. Ronald C. Simons and Charles C. Hughes, 123–45 (Dor-
drecht: D. Reidel, 1978); Stephen Gordon, “Medical Condition, Demon or Undead Corpse?
Sleep Paralysis and the Nightmare in Medieval Europe,” Social History of Medicine 28 (2015):
425–44; and J. Allan Cheyne, Steve D. Rueffer, and Ian R. Newby-Clark, “Hypnagogic and
Hypnopompic Hallucinations during Sleep Paralysis: Neurological and Cultural Construc-
tion of the Night-Mare,” Consciousness and Cognition 8 (1999): 319–37.
6. Quote by Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: Weiden and
Nicolson, 1971), 616. See also Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England:
A  Regional and Comparative Study, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1999); Cecil L’Estrange
Ewen, Witchcraft and Demonianism: A Concise Account Derived from Sworn Depositions and
Confession Obtained in the Courts of England and Wales (London: Heath Cranton Limited,
1933); Cecil L’Estrange Ewen, Witch Hunting and Witch Trials: The Indictments for Witchcraft
from the Records of 1373 Assizes Held for the Home Circuit A.D. 1559–1736 (London: Kegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1929); George Lyman Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England,
3rd ed. (New York: Atheneum, 1972); and Wallace Notestein, A History of Witchcraft in Eng-
land from 1558 to 1718 (Washington, D.C.: The American Historical Association, 1911).
7. See, for example, James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern
England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); and Deborah Willis, Malev-
olent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1995).
8. Quote from Barry Reay, Popular Cultures in England, 1550–1750 (London: Longman,
1998), 116. Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness; James Sharpe, “The Witch’s Familiar in ­Elizabethan
England,” in Authority and Consent in Tudor England: Essays Presented to C. S. L. Davies, ed.
George W. Bernard and Steven J. Gunn, 219–32 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002); James
Sharpe, “The Devil in East Anglia: The Matthew Hopkins Trials Reconsidered,” in Witchcraft
in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief, ed. Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester,
and Gareth Roberts, 237–54 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); James Sharpe,
“In Search of the English Sabbat: Popular Conceptions of Witches’ Meetings in Early Modern
1 72 pr et e r nature

England,” Journal of Early Modern Studies 2 (2013): 161–83; Willis, Malevolent Nurture; Mal-
colm Gaskill, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2000); Malcolm Gaskill, “The Devil in the Shape of a Man: Witchcraft, Conflict
and Belief in Jacobean England,” Historical Research 71 (1998): 142–71. For a recent study of the
Devil’s role in English witchcraft belief, see Charlotte-Rose Millar, Witchcraft, the Devil and
Emotions in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 2017).
9. The three pamphlets that fail to refer to the Devil are A Magazine of Scandall (London:
Printed for R. H., 1642); Strange and wonderful news from Yowel in Surry (London: Printed
for J. Clarke, 1681); and A Full and True Account of the Apprehending and Taking of Mrs Sarah
Moordike (London: Printed for John Alkin, 1701). For more on the Devil’s role in English
witchcraft pamphlets, see Millar, Witchcraft.
10. Pamphlets that refer to the Devil but do not mention the presence of a familiar spirit
are A Most Certain, Strange and True Discovery of a Witch (London: Printed by John Ham-
mond, 1643); Signes and Wonders from Heaven (London: Printed by I. H., 1645); The Power
of Witchcraft (London: Printed for Charls Tyns, 1662); Great News from the West of England
(London: Printed by T. M., 1689); and A Full and True Account of the Tryal, Examination,
and Condemnation of Mary Johnston, A Witch (London: Printed by T. Bland, 1706). The
representation of the Devil as a familiar spirit is usually explicit in witchcraft narratives but
is occasionally implied through references to teats on witches’ bodies, from which familiars
were believed to suck.
11. Diane Purkiss, Fairies and Fairy Stories: A History (Stroud: Tempus, 2007), 165.
12. Barbara Rosen, Witchcraft in England, 1558–1618, 2nd ed. (Amherst: University of Mas-
sachusetts Press, 1991), 23.
13. Charles Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-­
Century Europe (New York: Routledge, 2007), 188.
14. For work on the familiar spirit (not all of which discuss its demonic nature), see Emma
Wilby, “The Witch’s Familiar and the Fairy in Early Modern England and Scotland,” Folk-
lore 111, no. 2 (2000): 283–305; Emma Wilby, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic
Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic (Brighton: Sussex Aca-
demic, 2005); Sharpe, “Witch’s Familiar”; James Sharpe, “Familiars,” in Encyclopedia of Witch-
craft: The Western Tradition, ed. Richard M. Golden, 347–49 (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO,
2006); Millar, Witchcraft; Charlotte Millar, “The Witch’s Familiar in Sixteenth-Century
E
­ ngland,” Melbourne Historical Journal 38 (2010): 119–36; James A. Serpell, “Guardian Spirits
or Demonic Pets. The Concept of the Witch’s Familiar in Early Modern England, 1530-1712,”
in The Human/Animal Boundary, ed. A. N. H. Creager and W. C. Jordan, 157–90 (Rochester:
University of Rochester Press, 2002); and Greg Warburton, “Gender, Supernatural Power,
Agency and the Metamorphoses of the Familiar in Early Modern Pamphlet Accounts of
English Witchcraft,” Parergon 20 (2003): 95–118.
15. Craig Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Deborah Youngs and Simon Harris, “Demonizing
the Night in Medieval Europe: A Temporal Monstrosity?” in The Monstrous Middle Ages, ed.
Bettine Bildhauer and Robert Mills, 134–54 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003);
Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past (New York: Norton, 2005), especially part 1;
and Matthew Beaumont, Night Walking: A Nocturnal History of London (London: Verso, 2016).
 cha r lot te - ro se m ill ar 1 73

16. Ekirch, At Day’s Close, 15.

17. Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire, and Beaumont, Night Walking.
18. Youngs and Harris, “Demonizing the Night,” 137. See also Darren Oldridge, The Devil
in Early Modern England (Sutton: Stroud Publishing, 2000).
19. Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire, 25.
20. Ibid., 43.
21. Beaumont, Night Walking, 81.
22. Thomas Nashe, The Terrors of the Night Or, A Discourse of Apparitions (London:
Printed by John Danter for William Jones, 1594), sig. B2 v.
23. Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire, 25.
24. Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, Wherin the Lewde Dealing of Witches and
Witchmongers is Notablie Detected (London: Printed by Henry Denham for William Brome,
1584), book 7, ch. 15, 153.
25. Thomas Ady, A Candle in the Dark: Or, A Treatise Concerning the Nature of Witches &
Witchcraft: Being Advice to Judges, Sheriffes, Justices of the Peace, and Grand-Jury-men, what to
do, before they passe Sentence on such as are Arraigned for their Lives, as WITCHES (London:
Printed for R. I., 1655), sig. 171 r.
26. Pierre de Lancre, Tableau d l’inconstance (Paris: Aubier, 1982), 96, quoted in Koslofsky,
Evening’s Empire, 39.
27. Alec Ryrie, “Sleeping, Waking and Dreaming in Protestant Piety,” in Private and
Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain, ed. Jessica Martin and Alec Ryrie (Farnham, UK:
Ashgate, 2012), 74.
28. Sasha Handley, “From the Sacral to the Moral: Sleeping Practices and Household
Worship and Confessional Cultures in Late Seventeenth-Century England,” Cultural and
Social History 9 (2012): 32. For a comprehensive account of how early modern men and
women prepared for bed, particularly in terms of how they set up a healthy sleeping environ-
ment, see Sasha Handley, Sleep in Early Modern England (Yale: Yale University Press, 2016).
29. John Bradford, A Godlye Medytacyon Composed by the Faithfull and Constant Servant of
God J. B., latlye burnte in Smytfelde (London: Printed by Wyllyam Coplande, 1559), 44.
30. Thomas Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster
(­London: Printed by W. Stansby for John Barnes, 1613).
31. For scholarship on the crucial importance of witchcraft pamphlets for understand-
ing English witchcraft belief, see Macfarlane, Witchcraft in England, 81–86; Alan Macfarlane,
“Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart Essex,” in Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonol-
ogy: A Twelve Volume Anthology of Scholarly Articles, ed. Brian Levack, vol. 6, Witchcraft in
­England (New York: Garland, 1992), 7, 18; Ewen, Witchcraft and Demonism, 7; Wilby, Cunning
Folk and Familiar Spirits, 46; Marion Gibson, Reading Witchcraft: Stories of Early English
Witches (­London: Routledge, 2006), 6; Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, 105; Rosen, Witch-
craft in England, 20; Frances E. Dolan, True Relations: Reading, Literature and Evidence in
Seventeenth-Century England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), ch. 2;
David Cressy, Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England: Tales of Discord
and Dissension (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 25; Frederick Valletta, Witchcraft,
Magic and Superstition in England 1640–70 (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2000), 6; and Millar,
Witchcraft, 12–17.
1 74 pr et e r natur e

32. W. W., A True and Just Recorde, of the Information, Examination and Confession of all
the Witches, taken at S. Oses in the Countie of Essex: whereof some were executed, and other some
entreated according to the determination of lawe (London: Printed by Thomas Dawson, 1582),
sig. D2 r.
33. Richard Galis, A Brief Treatise Conteyning the Most Strange and Horrible Crueltye of
Elizabeth Stile alias Buckingham & hir Confederates executed at Abington upon Richard Galis
(1579), sig. A4 r.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., sig. A4 v.
36. Ibid.
37. The tryall and examination of Mrs Joan Peterson, before the Honourable Bench, at the
Sessions house in the Old-Bayley (London: Printed for G. Horton, 1652), title page.
38. Ibid., 6.
39. Ibid. Italics as in original text.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., 5.
42. Ibid., 7.
43. W. W., True and Just Recorde, sig. A3 v.
44. Matthew Hale, A Collection of Modern Relations of Matter of Fact Concerning Witches
and Witchcraft (London: Printed for John Harris, 1693), 59.
45. John Stearne, A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft (London: Printed by Wil-
liam Wilson, 1648), 41.
46. John Davenport, The Witches of Huntington (London: Printed by W. Wilson for Rich-
ard Clutterbuck, 1646), 4.
47. Nashe, Terrors of the Night, sig. B3 r.
48. Potts, Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, sig. B4 r.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., sig. E3 r.
51. Ness, “Old Hag Phenomenon,” 139.
52. Davies, “Nightmare Experience, Sleep Paralysis,” 2; Davies, “Hag-Riding,” 42; Hufford,
“New Approach to the ‘Old Hag,’” 76; Liddon,“Sleep Paralysis and Hypnagogic Hallucinations,”
88; Ness, “Old Hag Phenomenon,” 136, 139–41; Gordon, “Medical Condition,” 425–44; and
Cheyne, Rueffer, and Newby-Clark, “Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations,” 319–37.
53. David J. Hufford, The Terror that Comes in the Night (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania, 1982); Hufford, “New Approach to the ‘Old Hag,’”; Davies, “Hag-Riding”;
Ness, “Old Hag Phenomenon.” A psychic hallucination is the experience of sensing a person’s
presence but not being able to see them. This is often a disturbing experience. See Davies,
“Hag-Riding,” 41. For an older account of some of these symptoms by a sufferer of the night-
mare, see John Bond, An Essay on the Incubus, or Nightmare (London: Printed for D. Wilson
and T. Durham, 1753), 2–3 and 21–28.
54. For more on the connection between the nightmare and sleep paralysis, see H ­ ufford,
“New Approach to the ‘Old Hag,’” 81–82; Davies, “Hag-Riding,” 42; Ness, “Old Hag
Phenomenon,” 123–45; Liddon, “Sleep Paralysis and Hypnagogic Hallucinations”; and
­
Cheyne, Rueffer, and Newby-Clark, “Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations.”
 cha r lot te - ro se m ill ar 1 75

55. Bond, Essay on the Incubus, 71.

56. Ibid., 55.
57. Ibid.
58. Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, book 4, ch. 11, 86.
59. William F. MacLehose, “Fear, Fantasy and Sleep in Medieval Medicine,” in Emotions
and Health, ed. Elena Carrera (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 69.
60. Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, book 4, ch. 11, 86–87.
61. Davies, “Hag-Riding,” 47; and MacLehose, “Fear, Fantasy and Sleep,” 78.
62. For more on classical and medieval medical understandings of the incubus, see
­MacLehose, “Fear, Fantasy and Sleep,” 67–94, and for an article on the links between indiges-
tion and the nightmare, see Caroline Oates, “Cheese Gives You Nightmares: Old Hags and
Heartburn,” Folklore 114, no. 2 (2003): 205–25.
63. Bond, Essay on the Incubus, 78, 21. For more on how medical explanations for the night-
mare changed between the mid-sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, see Janine Rivière,
“Demons of Desire or Symptoms of Disease? Medical Theories and Popular Experiences
of the ‘Nightmare’ in Premodern England,” in Dreams, Dreamers, and Visions, ed. Anne
Marie Plane, Leslie Tuttle, and Anthony F. C. Wallace, 49–71 (Philadelphia: University of
­Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
64. Athenian Oracle, 1728, in Davies, “Nightmare Experience, Sleep Paralysis,” 9–10.
65. Belief in the nightmare as supernatural was by no means confined to this century and
continued well into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See Davies, “Hag-Riding,” and
Ness, “Old Hag Phenomenon.”
66. Davies, “Hag-Riding,” 36.
67. Ibid.
68. Hale, Collection of Modern Relations of Matter of Fact Concerning Witches, 58.
69. The Journal of Richard Norwood, 26, quoted in Jonas Liliequist, ed. A History of
­Emotions, 1200–1800 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012), 72.
70. Ibid.
71. George More, A true discourse concerning the certaine possession and dispossession of
7 persons (Middelburg: Printed by Richard Schilders, 1600), 32.
72. Ibid., 29–31.
73. Ibid., 30.
74. Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European
Witchcraft (London: Harper Collins, 1996); Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft,
Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1994); Davies, “Night-
mare Experience, Sleep Paralysis.”
75. Examination, confession, triall, and execution of Joane Williford, Joan Cariden, Jane Hott, 4.
76. For more on historical understandings of implicit and explicit pacts, see Brian Levack,
The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 3rd ed. (Harlow: Longman, 2006), 37–40; Sarah
Ferber, “Body of the Witch,” in The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed.
Richard M. Golden (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006), 131–33; William Monter, “Devil’s
Mark,” in Golden, Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, 275–77; Vincenzo Lavenia, “Witch’s Mark,”
in Golden, Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, 1220–21. For more on the conflation and distinction
1 76 pr et e r natur e

between the Witch’s Mark and the Devil’s Mark in English witchcraft, see Philip C. Almond,
The Devil: A New Biography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 138–40.
77. Examination, confession, triall, and execution of Joane Williford, Joan Cariden, Jane Hott, 4.
78. Ibid., 2–3.
79. Ibid., 3.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid.; Malcolm Gaskill, “Witches and Witchcraft Prosecutions, 1560–1660,” in Early
Modern Kent 1540–1640, ed. Michael Zell (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press and Kent County
Council, 2000), 264. Gaskill has also documented a history of conflict between Joan Cari-
den and Robert Greenstreet, the mayor who oversaw the trials; see Gaskill, “Witches and
­Witchcraft,” 264–65.
83. For more on the Lancashire Witches, see Robert Poole, ed., The Lancashire Witches:
Histories and Stories (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002); Jonathan Lumby, The
Lancashire Witch-Craze: Jennet Preston and the Lancashire Witches, 1612 (Preston: Carnegie,
1995); and Philip C. Almond, The Lancashire Witches: A Chronicle of Sorcery and Death on
Pendle Hill (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012).
84. Potts, Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, sig. C2 r.
85. Rivière, “Demons of Desire,” 52.
86. Davies, “Hag-Riding,” 48.
87. The Journal of Richard Norwood, 26, quoted in Liliequist, History of Emotions, 72.
88. Ibid.
89. More, True discourse concerning the certaine possession and dispossession of 7 persons, 31.
90. Rivière, “Demons of Desire,” 55.
91. For twentieth-century examples of the extreme terror caused by the nightmare, see
Ness, “Old Hag Phenomenon.”
92. Potts, Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, sig. C2 r.
93. Ibid., sig. H3 r.
94. Ibid.
95. Ibid., sig. H3 v.
96. Ibid., sigs. H3 v–H4 r.
97. For more on the emotional character of witch/devil relationships, see Millar,
­Witchcraft; Willis, Malevelent Nurture; and Diane Purkiss, “Women’s Stories of Witchcraft
in Early Modern England: The House, the Body, the Child,” Gender and History 7 (1995):
408–32.
98. W. W. True and just Recorde, sig. B8 r.
99. Henry Goodcole, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer, A Witch (London:
Printed for William Butler, 1621), sig. C1 r.
100. A True and Impartial Relation of the Informations Against Three Witches (London:
Printed by Freeman Collins, 1682), 38.
101. Goodcole, Wonderfull Discoverie, sig. C3 r; Stearne, Confirmation and Discovery of
Witchcraft, 28; True and Impartial Relation of the Informations Against Three Witches, 19; and
Potts, Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, sig. H3 r.
 cha r lot te - ro se m ill ar 177

102. Of the twenty-three witchcraft pamphlets published between 1566 and 1645, only one
fails to refer to witches as malicious, vengeful men and women or to label revenge, malice,
rage, anger, or hate as either the primary, or one of the primary, reasons for a witch’s decision
to perform maleficium. For the exception, see The Examination of John Walsh before Maister
Thomas Williams (London: Printed by John Awdely, 1566).
103. Rivière, “Demons of Desire,” 51–52.
104. For an exploration of the evil undertones of midnight in a Shakespearean context, see
Matthew Beaumont, Night Walking, ch. 3.
105. See, for example, Ryrie, “Sleeping, Waking and Dreaming,” 84–85, and Koslofsky,
Evening’s Empire, 11.
106. Tryall and examination of Mrs Joan Peterson, 5.

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