by Nicholas Schofield
Only a few miles out of Greater London, Denham is full of rural charm and its main street boasts an impressive number of pubs serving real ale. In the mid-1580s, however, this village was the epicentre of a series of Catholic exorcisms that caught the country’s attention. Part of the drama was even played out in Uxbridge and, after particularly trying days in the presbytery office, I always remind myself that at least I did not have to deal with the devils of 1585-86!
The mastermind behind this was Fr William Weston, the Superior of the English Jesuits, who was a friend of the Catholic Peckham family of Denham. Through his pastoral ministry he became concerned that ‘many people, including Catholics, were tormented by evil spirits who would cause fearful disturbance in those in whom they dwelt.’ It was difficult dealing with these cases without attracting too much attention, since ‘usually they let out violent and raucous shrieks during the ceremonies’, but Weston became convinced that ‘something had to be attempted’. The result was a veritable campaign of exorcisms.
Though Weston alludes to these in his Autobiography, most of the details come from an anti-Catholic source: Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, written nearly twenty years later by order of the Privy Council. Harsnett, a future Archbishop of York, was not only concerned to condemn Catholic exorcisms, which he thought superstitious and fraudulent, but by doing so was attacking extremists within the Church of England, often on the ‘puritan’ fringe, who promoted similar practises. Much of his information was alleged to come from a Catholic document, now lost, found in the possession of one Robert Barnes.
Weston’s astonishing series of exorcisms took place not only in Denham, Uxbridge and the surrounding area but in Hackney and central London. He was assisted by twelve other priests, including two future Catholic martyrs: Blessed Robert Dibdale and Blessed John Cornelius. Another priest, Anthony Tyrrell, who later apostasised, was used as a source by Harsnett. Dibdale was ‘hanged, bowelled and quartered’ at Tyburn shortly afterwards, in October 1586. Bishop Challoner preserves a testimony that at Denham ‘there were three persons bewitched and possessed – two maids and one man. Out of one of the maids he [Dibdale] brought forth a needle at her cheek, and two rusty nails and pieces of lead.’ Harsnett recalls that he also spent ‘two or three nights’ at Uxbridge and lay his hands on a possessed woman who ‘felt herself to burn’.
Other strategies were used. After a Mass celebrated by Dibdale, one of the Peckham’s servants, Friswood Williams, was bound to a chair with towels and urged to drink ‘a pint of Sack and Salad Oil, being hallowed and mingled with some kind of spices’; finally her head was held over a dish of burning brimstone until her face turned black. This was in accordance with a popular work of demonology, Flagellum Daemonum (‘The Scourge of Demons’, 1577), by the Italian Franciscan Girolamo Menghi. The demons also reacted to priestly vestments: another Denham servant, Sara Williams, is described by Harsnett as becoming ‘puffed’ at the appearance of an amice (a priestly vestment) and the devil within her being ‘rent, battered and torn’ by the priest’s stole.
News of these exorcisms even reached the ears of Philip II’s confessor, Diego de Yepez, who added that the devils ‘told what relics of the saints each one had privately brought with him, and obeyed the prayers and exorcisms of the Church, confessing and declaring to their own confusion the virtue which the sign of the cross, holy water, and relics (as well of the ancient saints as of those that suffer in these days in England for the Catholic faith) have against them.’
Weston did not only want to defeat evil and help those possibly affected by possession. As he would tell an interrogator in prison, ‘I was certain that there were many people who, given an opportunity of observing the power of the Church over evil spirits and monsters, would see and acknowledge at once the difference between the two religions and award the victory to the Catholic faith.’ Yepez states that many Protestants ‘were convinced by the evidence of what they saw’ and were converted.
The house at Denham was eventually raided by pursuivants in June 1586. Weston later recalled: ‘They chose what they thought was the most likely time for Mass and for the exorcisms; but, fortunately, they spent a long time knocking at the gate – it was a large house encircled by a high wall – otherwise they would have burst in at all the entrances at once and surprised us.’ They eventually gained admittance but met one of the ‘possessed’ in the entrance hall: ‘as soon as she saw them, she glared and ground her teeth and said that one of the searchers had a thousand devils hanging on to the buttons of his coat. This scared them. All the mad fury of their first entry was forgotten. Indeed, in their extreme terror they seemed half-dead and became most amenable…Not a thing in the entire house was touched…In point of fact several priests were in the house at the time, some actually saying Mass when the men arrived; but everything was finished and the priests put away in various hiding places before the rogues were let in.’
The case of the ‘Devils of Denham’ proves that Elizabethan priests could be quite bold in their pastoral strategy. With no episcopal oversight, they showed surprising creativity and pushed their authority to the limits. Moreover, as one recent historian (Francis Young) comments, ‘the obedience of demons was seen as the ultimate sign and supernatural seal of religious authority. Exorcism, unlike other aspects of Catholic mission, often brought recusant priests into direct contact with non-Catholics and provided an unparalleled opportunity for conversions.’ Catholic exorcists were also attacked for their actions as further proof of the corruption of ‘popery’ and Harsnett frequently suggests the scandalous behaviour of the priests and their connections with plotters and conspirators.
Harsnett’s book and the various names given by him to the devils are said to have inspired Shakespeare for a scene in King Lear, where Edgar say: ‘Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once; of lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididance, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of mobbing and mowing; who since possesses chambermaids and waiting-women.’ The ‘Devils of Denham’ still live on in one of our greatest literary works.
