This book is about magic and people. Magic, in one form or another, is a constant in all societies across the world and throughout time. The place it inhabits in society, and how those who practise it are treated, are the variables; the fact of its presence is rarely a novelty. Despite this, the study of magic has largely been quartered separately from other lines of historical inquiry, as a strange outlier to the mainstream of political, social, economic, or archival discourse. This is an inaccurate and unhelpful interpretation of a fundamental part of human lived experience.

Chapter 5 is structured according to the uses for which noble clients commissioned magic. The range of uses is broader than the five identified for other social classes and they have therefore been grouped under three wider ambitions: political or social advancement; money; and practicalities. By structuring the discussion in this way we are able to interrogate the motivations behind the upper classes’ use of magic, and investigate the role it played in elite culture. The conclusion of this discussion is that the few aristocratic magic cases that survive are indicative of a wider culture of use

Moving away from the quantitative approach of Chapters 1 and 2, Chapter 3 considers service magicians’ social position. The chapter begins by exploring the official stance towards magic and magicians over the period: what sort of archetypal image is painted by ecclesiastical and secular authorities, and how this changed over the centuries. This (overwhelmingly negative) characterisation acts as a point of comparison against popular attitudes towards service magic, and treatment of wizards in reality. The second section considers magicians living in London and uses their domiciliary location as a lens to look at how they lived and practised. Through this approach we see that most practitioners, though living on the edge of the city, were nevertheless carefully positioned to be as accessible to their client base as possible. Further investigation of court records and popular media (primarily plays) of the time demonstrates that service magicians were a recognised, even occasionally celebrated, part of London life. This leads to a conclusion that magic was broadly accepted in wider society, at least in an urban context.

This chapter focuses on how and when elite persons employed magicians; what sort of relationship was enjoyed between employer and employee; and how such relationships were allowed to continue in a courtly context. Through the course of this discussion we see that the culture of magic use among the elite was substantially different to that of society more broadly. For example, whereas generally the lower classes had a ‘pay per use’ arrangement with service magicians, upper classes were more in the habit of keeping magicians as part of their household, normally requesting the services from a cleric on retainer. The implications of this, and other habits peculiar to the elite, are explored in some detail.

Magic is a constant across the world and throughout time. The place it inhabits in society and how those who practise it are treated are the variables; its presence is never a novelty. While witchcraft is recognised as a phenomenon of the medieval and early modern periods, service magic – performed to a useful end in exchange for a fee, and more common than witchcraft – has been overlooked. This book gathers over 700 instances of magic use in England between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries to demonstrate the entrenched nature of service magic in premodern society, and explore how it was perceived and incorporated into daily life. Service magic was well established by the time of the witch trials, and was recognised as a useful tool from at least the fourteenth century. It was used to meet needs that nothing else could address, like healing the chronically sick, finding lost goods, ending poverty by locating buried treasure, and kindling love. Though its use was technically illicit, first treated as a moral crime and then a secular one from the mid-sixteenth century, for most people magic was an accepted and even welcome aspect of everyday life.

Chapter 2 focuses on who service magicians were. As with Chapter 1, there is an element of statistical analysis as we endeavour to ascertain who a ‘typical’ service magician might be. The broad conclusion reached is that service magicians were diverse in terms of gender, occupation, and, as far as we can tell, age, though if the demographics are broken down by type of magic practised, some patterns do emerge. The second section of this chapter looks at the economics of magic: in short, how it worked as a service, and what sort of income a magician might expect. In doing so, we learn something of the financial state of sorcerers. The chapter concludes with a case study of Westminster, through which it is possible to gain an idea of how magic sat alongside other trades in a microcosmic service economy.

Chapter 4 focuses on magicians’ clients. Adopting a similar format to Chapter 3, it begins with a summary of the way clients were portrayed in didactic texts, isolating some key characteristics that were persistently applied. Again, these are unflattering, and the rest of the chapter is dedicated to establishing the extent to which they were accurate. We see that popular portrayals of clients are often more sympathetic, and that, if the court records are anything to go by, the range of people who visited magicians was very diverse. We also find that clients were aware of the negative reputations they might garner, and as such tried either to hide or justify their activities. Finally, we see that clients, especially in the late medieval period, were very aware that they were indeed clients. As such, they carried certain expectations about what they would receive from a magician and were even prepared to seek redress when disappointed. This assertive stance may have become more aggressive as the period progressed and fear crept in over the potential link between witchcraft and other forms of magic. Simultaneously, new legislation outlawing various types of practical magic probably led to a drop in clients seeking formal redress.

Chapter 1 focuses on the most common demands placed on magic by wider society during the late medieval and early modern periods. This chapter acts as the foundation for the rest of the book: it cements the idea of magic as a useful tool that could be employed for mundane or everyday purposes. It also establishes what these purposes generally were, using a statistical approach to gauge the popularity of certain services. As such, Chapter 1 is divided into sections covering the primary demands made on magic, including healing and unwitching; theft and goods recovery; love magic; and treasure hunting. Under each of these sections their fluctuating popularity is explored, as are the methods used to bring about the desired outcome.