Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass (1616), and exorcism.

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The above engraving of a Catholic exorcism is by Jaques Callot, in 1630 (France/Italy).

Using Stephen Greenblatt (‘Shakespeare and the exorcists’ in Shakespearean Negotiations), Barbara Rosen (ed), Witchcraft in England 1558-1618, Keith Thomas, etc, a chronology of some of the relevant events:

An approximate time-line of exorcisms and John Darrel

1585-6 Jesuit exorcisms by William Weston at Denham, Buckinghamshire, draw large crowds.

Late 1580’s-early 1590’s: Darrel, a charismatic Puritan, exorcises at Mansfield (Nottinghamshire). Darrel forced the spirit to name the witch that had sent him. He denounced the named witch to the local J.P., but was himself threatened with arrest. Darrel’s next famous case involved Thomas Darling (the Boy of Burton). This case led to Alice Goodridge being accused of sending the devil into the boy. At the direction of a local cunning man, Alice was perhaps subjected to or threatened with torture. She confessed that she sent the devil in the form of a dog to molest the boy. Tried and sentenced to death by Lord Chief Justice Anderson, she died in prison before execution. Darrel was now able to expel the spirit from the boy, though he relapsed on his first day back at school. Darrel moved on to the seven Starkey children in Lancashire. Their tutor Edmund Hartley was accused of bewitching the children, breathing the devil into their bodies by kissing them. He was arrested and charged; the father suddenly recalled seeing Hartley make a magic circle. He was executed, Darrel now cured the children.

1598 William Sommers relates that he has offended a witch, and falls into convulsions. Darrel intervenes, and his investigations lead to 13 witches being accused (Query – was this a coven?). Sommers, however, was thought by some observers to be playacting, and confessed as much before an ecclesiastical commission, re-enacting his convulsions for them. But he then retracted his confession, and fell into such spectacular fits that the churchmen decided his possession had to be genuinely demoniac. After two weeks, he confessed that this was further imposition, and re-performed his act before the commission he had just imposed upon. Darrel is sent by Lord Chief Justice Anderson to Archbishop Whitgift, degraded from the clergy, and imprisoned (1599). In defence of his actions, Darrel says that: ‘If neither possession, nor witchcraft (contrary to that hath been so long generally and confidently affirmed, why should we think that there are devils? … If no Devils, no God’. He argued further that the apparent unmasking of Sommers was the product of Satan’s cunning.

In other cases, Thomas Perry, the Boy of Bilson is examined by the Bishop of Coventry. He falls into fits when the beginning of St John’s Gospel is read out. The Bishop tells the boy that he will also recite the same verses in Greek, but substitutes another text. The boy nevertheless convulses on cue.

Mary Glover – aged 14 – also fell into fits, and Elizabeth Jordan was accused of bewitching her, and tried as a witch. Bishop Bancroft declares the girl a fraud, and Dr Edward Jordan publishes A brief discourse of a disease called the suffocation of the mother, written upon occasion which hath been taken thereby to suspect possession of an evil spirit. But Lord Chief Justice Anderson had pronounced on the case of Elizabeth Jordan, the accused, to the Jury:

• The land is full of witches; they abound in all places. I have hanged five or six and twenty of them; there is no man here can speak more of them than myself. Few of them would confess it; some of them did, against whom the proofs were nothing so manifest as against those that denied it. They have on their bodies divers strange marks at which (as some of them have confessed) the Devil sucks their blood; for they have forsaken God, renounced their baptism, and vowed their service to the Devil, and so the sacrifice which they offer him is their blood. This woman hath the like marks on sundry places of her body as you may see testified under the hands of the women that were appointed to search her.
• The Devil is a spirit of darkness, he deals closely and cunningly, you shall hardly find any direct proofs in such a case, but by many presumptions and circumstances you may gather it. When they are full of cursing, use their tongue to speak mischievously, and it falls out accordingly, what greater presumption can you have of a witch? This woman hath that property; she is full of cursing, she threatens and prophesies and still it takes effect; she must of necessity be a prophet or a witch.
• Their malice is great, their practices devilish, and if we shall not convince them without their own confession, or direct proofs, where the presumptions are so great, and the circumstances so apparent, they will in short time over-run the whole land.

1603. Samuel Harsnett writes his A Declaration of Certain Egregious Popish Impostures, denouncing the exorcisms as ‘devil theatre’. The investigation of Sommers is his main evidence. In a vigorous pamphlet war, Darrel’s defenders against the Anglican establishment produce answers. Copies of all these works are presented by their authors to King James at his accession, as materials for the royal in-tray.

1604 new Church canons regulating exorcisms: a preacher has to have permission from his Bishop to attempt any casting out of devils.

1614. Parliament having failed to grant new taxes, James seeks to raise revenues by granting new monopolies (Q. Does Jonson’s play link ‘possession’ with an insane desire for possessions?)

1616 James himself exposes fraudulence in the case of women accused of witchcraft in Leicestershire by John Smith. Nine women had been hanged on July 18th, James discovered fraudulence in August, the rest of the accused were released, to the huge discomfiture of Justices Sir Humphrey Ward and Sir Randal Crew.

1616, The Devil is an Ass: culminates in the scene in which Fitzdotterel feigns possession, convincing utterly Sir Paul Eitherside. Mistress Fitzdotterel, Manly and Wittipol are accused of witchcraft and sorcery. Fitzdotterel’s act includes all the details recorded by Harsnett of William Sommers’ imposition, actions he confessed to having perfected under Darrel’s tutelage.

· Is this play, with its congeries of fraudsters, a play of confident scepticism, presenting witchcraft (though one of its chief evidences) as a fraud which only the inane, and the most idiotic of justices, will credit?

· In this play, the devils are redundant, struggling to keep up, dated (in part by their association with antiquated theatrical forms like the interlude, with its vice figure), and bungling.

This woodcut is from the anonymous jest book, The Historie of Friar Rush: how he came to a house of religion to seeke service ... Being full of pleasant mirth and delight for young people, first known edition circa 1620. Earlier editions have probably been lost. Friar Rush is a devil, who disguises himself as a servant to promote lechery in a priory. Jonson may have borrowed something from the work. The woodcut may have first been engraved for another work, and may be a Protestant satire on exorcism, in that the priests exorcising the devil from the woman are themselves devils. It was re-cycled in a work in which Friar Rush also performs this function (despite being a devil himself).