[33] Ibid., 78-98.
[34] Yet Darrel must have realized that he had the worst of it. There is a pathetic acknowledgment of this in the "Preface to the Reader" of his publication, A Survey of Certaine Dialogical Discourses, written by John Deacon and John Walker ... (1602): "But like a tried and weather-beaten bird [I] wish for quiet corner to rest myself in and to drye my feathers in the warme sun."
[35] T. G. Law, "Devil Hunting in Elizabethan England," in Nineteenth Century, March, 1894.
[36] On the matter of exorcism the position of the Church of England became fixed by 1604. The question had been a cause of disagreement among the leaders of the Reformation. The Lutherans retained exorcism in the baptismal ritual and rivalled the Roman clergy in their exorcism of the possessed. It was just at the close of the sixteenth century that there arose in Lutheran Germany a hot struggle between the believers in exorcism and those who would oust it as a superstition. The Swiss and Genevan reformers, unlike Luther, had discarded exorcism, declaring it to have belonged only to the early church, and charging modern instances to Papist fraud; and with them seem to have agreed their South German friends. In England baptismal exorcism was at first retained in the ritual under Edward VI, but in 1552, under Bucer's influence, it was dropped. Under Elizabeth the yet greater influence of Zurich and Geneva must have discredited all exorcism, and one finds abundant evidence of this in the writings of Jewel and his followers. An interesting letter of Archbishop Parker in 1574 shows his utter incredulity as to possession in the case of Agnes Bridges and Rachel Pinder of Lothbury; see Parker's Correspondence (Parker Soc., Cambridge, 1856), 465-466. His successor, the Calvinistic Whitgift, was almost certainly of the same mind. Bancroft, the next archbishop of Canterbury, drew up or at least inspired that epoch-making body of canons enacted by Convocation in the spring of 1604, the 72d article of which forbids any Anglican clergyman, without the express consent of his bishop obtained beforehand, to use exorcism in any fashion under any pretext, on pain of being counted an impostor and deposed from the ministry. This ended the matter so far as the English church was concerned. For this résumé of the Protestant and the Anglican attitude toward exorcism I am indebted to Professor Burr.
[37] Harsnett, A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (London, 1605), 136-138.
[38] It is not impossible that Harsnett was acting as a mouth-piece for Bancroft. Darrel wrote: "There is no doubt but that S. H. stand for Samuell Harsnet, chapline to the Bishop of London, but whither he alone, or his lord and hee, have discovered this counterfeyting and cosonage there is the question. Some thinke the booke to be the Bishops owne doing: and many thinke it to be the joynt worke of them both." A Detection of that sinnful ... discours of Samuel Harshnet, 7, 8.
[39] From 1602 until 1609 he was archdeacon of Essex; see Victoria History of Essex, II, (London, 1907), 46.
[40] There is a statement by the Reverend John Swan, who wrote in 1603, that Harsnett's book had been put into the hands of King James, presumably after his coming to England; see John Swan, A True and Breife Report of Mary Glover's Vexation, and of her deliverance ... (1603), "Dedication to the King," 3. One could wish for some confirmation of this statement. Certainly James would not at that time have sympathized with Harsnett's views about witches, but his attitude on several occasions toward those supposed to be possessed by evil spirits would indicate that he may very well have been influenced by a reading of the Discovery.
[41] On page 36 of the Discovery Harsnett wrote: "Whether witches can send devils into men and women (as many doe pretende) is a question amongst those that write of such matters, and the learneder and sounder sort doe hold the negative." One does not need to read far in Harsnett to understand what he thought.
[42] His scholarship, evident from his books, is attested by Thomas Fuller, who calls him "a man of great learning, strong parts, and stout spirit" (Worthies of England, ed. of London, 1840, I, 507).