Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Disfigured by the Devil: The story of Alexander Nyndge
- Chapter 2 Two possessed maidens in London: The story of Agnes Briggs and Rachel Pinder
- Chapter 3 The witches of Warboys: The story of the Throckmorton children
- Chapter 4 The boy of Burton: The story of Thomas Darling
- Chapter 5 A household possessed: The story of the Lancashire seven
- Chapter 6 The counterfeit demoniac: The story of William Sommers
- Chapter 7 The puritan martyr: The story of Mary Glover
- Chapter 8 The boy of Bilson: The story of William Perry
- Chapter 9 A pious daughter: The story of Margaret Muschamp
- References
- Index
Chapter 8 - The boy of Bilson: The story of William Perry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Disfigured by the Devil: The story of Alexander Nyndge
- Chapter 2 Two possessed maidens in London: The story of Agnes Briggs and Rachel Pinder
- Chapter 3 The witches of Warboys: The story of the Throckmorton children
- Chapter 4 The boy of Burton: The story of Thomas Darling
- Chapter 5 A household possessed: The story of the Lancashire seven
- Chapter 6 The counterfeit demoniac: The story of William Sommers
- Chapter 7 The puritan martyr: The story of Mary Glover
- Chapter 8 The boy of Bilson: The story of William Perry
- Chapter 9 A pious daughter: The story of Margaret Muschamp
- References
- Index
Summary
In 1762, William Hogarth's print ‘Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism’ was published. Along with the Cock Lane Ghost, the Drummer of Tedworth, the Ghost of Julius Caesar and Mary Toft the woman who gave birth to live rabbits, there is pictured a small boy huddled beneath the pulpit, vomiting hob nails and iron staples. The youth pictured is the twelve or thirteen-year-old William Perry, otherwise known as the boy of Bilson, who confessed on 8 October 1620 to having counterfeited his possession.
The Boy of Bilson is a collection of texts brought together by Richard Baddeley, secretary to the inquiry which led to the apparent exposure of William Perry. It consists of seven different texts. The first of these is a discourse on the Catholic exorcising of unclean spirits in twenty-three advertisements or admonitions, the last of which is the account of the exorcism of William Perry by Master Wheeler, one of the priests involved. There then follows an account of the trial of the witch accused of bewitching Perry, and of Perry's exposure as a fraud probably written by Baddeley. Two examinations and confessions of Perry before Thomas Morton, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, are followed by Perry's acknowledgement of his counterfeit. The edition concludes with the Catholic gentleman Thomas Nechils' declaration that Wheeler's written account of the case was a genuine one, personally given to him by the priest.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern EnglandContemporary Texts and their Cultural Contexts, pp. 331 - 357Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004