The discoverie of witchcraft ... Being a reprint of the first edition published in 1584 / by Reginald Scot ; Edited with explanatory notes, glossary and introduction by Brinsley Nicholson.

  • Scot Reginald, 1538?-1599.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The discoverie of witchcraft ... Being a reprint of the first edition published in 1584 / by Reginald Scot ; Edited with explanatory notes, glossary and introduction by Brinsley Nicholson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    ing. But why do we not find so large and important a book as the Witchcraft of 1584 so entered, the writer being of a family of no mean repute, and the head of his house, Sir Th. Scot, being in those days a man of some mark ? The answer, after what has been said, is simple. He upheld and defended a heresy, the existence and dia- bolical powers and practices of witches being believed in and guarded against, by the Queen, the bishops, and the people. Hence the reply of the Stationers' Company would most certainly have been—the same as in more trifling cases— provided he shall get the bishop of Lon- don his alowance to yt, words which, under the circumstances, would have been a refusal, and a refusal which, had any steps been taken against him after its publication, would have told against him. Hence he resolved to print it, taking all the blame and responsibility on his own shoulders, no stationer's name being connected with it, and the name of the printer appearing only at the end of the book, without date or place of address—Imprinted at London by | Williain Brome. And here, by the vv^ay, it may be mentioned that though called in catalogues a quarto, its signatures are in eights. As before stated, both Thomas Ady and Anthony a Wood tell us that it did for a time make great impressions on the Magistracy and Clergy, and that it did so generally is shown by the appear- ance of Webster's, Ady's, and other books on the same side, and those of Gifford, Perkins, and others, on the other, including King James, who, in 1597, issued his Dcemonologie specially against it. Whether Elizabeth or the authorities under her took any notice of it is doubtful, for, as I have said, he was still an Esquire in 1587 ; and the last words of his will, for greate is the trouble my poor wief hath had with me, and small is the comforte she hath receyved at my hands, and his designation of himself as gent., point rather to a voluntary surrender of his office, through weakness and ill-health, than to a dismissal. But zeal for the truth, as he believed it, combined with his fears for himself, for he believed that he had been the object of witchcraft and of the machinations of the evil powers more than once, though luckily in vain, led the royal author on the other side to cause Scot's book to be burned by the common hangman ; and, as is also said by Cole, not one copy alone, as significant of its character, and of its