The British Library manuscript Sloane MS 3822 comprises the occult interests of an early modern antiquarian. Described succinctly but accurately as ‘a medley of papers from the desks of Simon Forman, Elias Ashmole, and other English magicians’, its miscellaneous contents centre on the practical applications of astral magic, a form of Arabic ritual magic that came to be used alongside spirit conjuring in late medieval Europe. Also known as astrological image magic, astral magic utilises the hidden forces of heavenly bodies, which are captured in sigils that are constructed under appropriate astrological conditions. Consisting of gemstones, wax objects or metal plates inscribed with divine and spirit names and incomprehensible symbols called caracteres, these sigils could be used to communicate with planetary and stellar spirits, and to further one's aims by occult means, such as physical and spiritual protection, and friendship, love or hate between people. In the early modern period, astral magic was practised widely among professionals and scholars, including the antiquarian Elias Ashmole (1617–92), who assembled Sloane MS 3822 in the final decade of his life. In addition to heraldry and alchemy, Ashmole's interests encompassed the occult, for which he collected and copied objects and astrological casebooks, diaries and other writings of well-known early modern occultists who were known to be spirit communicators, with an eye not only to preserve valuable knowledge about the occult, but also to follow in their footsteps by practising magic himself.

INTRODUCTION

This large group of documents concerns a panic over witchcraft centred in Alloa, near Stirling. It was a chain-reaction hunt for witches, in which one suspect named others and these were then investigated in their turn. There were at least twenty-seven suspects overall. At least sixteen were brought to trial, and seven were executed; there was also one death in prison. The detailed and varied documentation of the panic enables us to see how ideas of demonic witchcraft and malefice were developed and refined over several months. Repeated interrogations of the suspects created different versions of many stories – stories of meetings with the Devil, and stories of collective malefices. There were also depositions from aggrieved neighbours that told of individual malefices.

Alloa was a small town, with a population of perhaps one thousand. Some of the accused witches lived in the town itself, while others were from nearby settlements like Cambus and Tullibody. Some witches from two locations further afield, Stirling and Kippen, were also drawn into the panic. The Alloa prosecutors came partly from the burgesses and bailies of the town, and partly from the landed elite of the surrounding area. The local justices of the peace, all lairds, played prominent roles. The presbytery of Stirling was involved early on, and the panic also drew in the Stirling burgh authorities and even the military officers in Stirling Castle.

The panic occurred in two phases, broadly May to August 1658 and November 1658 to March 1659. The initial suspect, whose confessions seem to have launched the panic, was Margaret Douchall. She was arrested and interrogated by local authorities in Alloa in early May 1658.

Verum ea, quae temporum distinctione latius digesta sunt, ob memoriam conseruandam breuiter recapitulari placuit.

Across more than 250 years from the later ninth century to the mid-1150s, the annals of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles were authored and compiled, copied and augmented, collated and deleted, in a vast collective endeavour of remembering English history. These annals were first created at a moment when viking raiders and settlers were remaking the political map of England. They were copied and extended across the following centuries: as a new English kingdom extended its power in Britain across the tenth century; when this fell into Danish hands at the beginning of the eleventh century; was then conquered by the Normans after the Battle of Hastings in 1066; and into the twelfth century until a moment of relative peace after the anarchy of civil war during the reign of King Stephen and the accession of Henry II in 1054, the date of the Chronicles’ last entry. Some of the scribes involved in the ongoing enterprise of copying the annals were probably also makers and authors of the Chronicles, while some borrowed and revised the work of others. Across more than two-and-a-half centuries commitment to the Chronicle would wax and wane; it is difficult to know whose interests drove the ongoing work of chronicling, but some degree of patronage, ecclesiastical or lay, is likely, especially at the moment of the Chronicle's genesis.

Introduction

Swift, a servant, was found guilty of cozenage (deceit and fraud) in 1603 for concocting a plan to ruin the reputation of his master's beloved daughter, aged under fourteen, and for blackmailing his employer. Swift had successfully manipulated the girl into agreeing to a secret pre-contract, then, when she was later to be married to another, pressured his master into redeeming the bills to save his daughter's reputation. Swift was fined, placed in the pillory in Cheapside and Westminster, imprisoned at her majesty's pleasure, and ordered to make a public confession on his knees. While in the pillory he behaved, according to contemporary reports, “slanderously and contemptuously” by claiming he was being punished for loving a gentlewoman, by declaring himself innocent after he had been convicted, by terming his punishment infamous penance, and by scorning the order for his confession. This was a juicy tale with multiple moral and criminal offenses to consider. “A Breviat of Swift's Case” contained in the Gawdy papers, which itemized Swift's transgressions, placed at the top of the list of nine not cozenage, not contempt, not his callous treatment of a young girl but “ingratitude.” Swift was ungrateful because “He had been brought up by his master's charity from 10 till 26. After he was 18 his master gave him 12l. a year, for meat, drink and livery.” Swift, however, “thought his master miserable towards him” and so plotted “to get some greater gain.” To understand why Swift's ingratitude was regarded as his most egregious act requires an investigation of the place of gratitude in early modern society.

On September 21, 1848, the fifteen-year-old Johannes Brahms gave a concert of his own for the first time in his hometown of Hamburg. It made hardly a ripple. “The world had other things to do,” as Max Kalbeck would later wryly explain, “than to be concerned with a new pianist.” Indeed, Brahms's debut came in the midst of a tumultuous period in the city's history, as Hamburg was swept up in the revolutionary wave that had begun in Paris in February, and in March had moved eastward into the German lands and well beyond. Common to all the revolutions of 1848 were liberal demands for constitutional government and the rule of law, suffrage rights, effective parliaments, freedom of the press, and freedom of association. But in Germany liberalism was only part of the story; the delegates who gathered in the Frankfurt National Assembly (May 18, 1848–May 31, 1849) also pushed for the creation of a unified constitutional German state. This was a dream that had animated liberals since the Napoleonic era. Napoleon's dramatic defeat of combined Prussian and Saxon forces in the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt in October 1806 had hit hard. Large-scale French occupation ensued, the states of the German Rhineland were made to function as French military satellites, and eventually some parts of Germany, including Hamburg, were formally annexed into the French Empire.

INTRODUCTION

This document is a commission of justiciary – an order empowering a group of men in Forfarshire to hold criminal trials for witchcraft in Arbroath. It was issued in the name of Scotland's justice general, Archibald Campbell, fifth earl of Argyll, in April 1568. The justice general was the nominal superintendent of the criminal justice system; he rarely acted in person, but this seems to have been an instance of his doing so. The system was usually operated by the justice clerk using the name of the crown directly; the justice clerk ( John Bellenden of Auchnoull) was involved in this commission too, being mentioned near the end of the text. Seven local commissioners were appointed to hold the trials; there was a quorum of three, two of whom had to be James, fifth Lord Ogilvy, and John Erskine of Dun. The commission was to endure for six months. It empowered the commissioners to try forty named suspects, and any other witches who might be accused. It is clear evidence of a regional witchcraft panic.

The document is neatly written on a single large sheet, complete with a seal. It has been slightly damaged in places, and a few of the names present challenges of interpretation, but it is otherwise clear. The details of legal phraseology in its wording reveal much about the mechanics of a sixteenthcentury criminal court.

Michael Wasser has recently analysed this commission, setting it in context of the broader prosecution of witches and other criminals during the regency of the earl of Moray (1567–70). He argues that the Forfarshire document was issued during a broader panic in eastern Scotland in 1568 and 1569.

The very concept of Translatio Imperii encompasses, even in its nomenclature, a sense of movement, and therefore, continuity. As we saw in the previous chapter, the idea of the transfer of power proved essential for the legitimising frameworks created during the Middle Ages, and specifically, as analysed previously, as a way of justifying the presence of a particular dynasty, the Staufens, on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. Amongst the ways of legitimising this transfer of power, one of the most common mechanisms throughout history, and especially during the Middle Ages, was alluding to a particular inheritance and lineage. In fact, already in Republican Rome, kinship, encoded in specific terms, was necessary in defining aristocracy and distinguishing different strata of power. Kin affinity linked the legal rights of a member of a certain kin-group to the benefits of belonging to that family. In this way, in the case of the Romans, the concept of ‘family’ included all members of a familial core, linked by blood, marriage, or adoption, and the properties that belonged to the household – including, during this period, slaves and freemen. On the other hand, Romans usually referred to ancestry in patrilineal terms: family names were handed down from the pater familiae to the son, whether biological or not.

Perhaps one of the most paradigmatic examples of adoptive inheritance in Ancient Rome is that of the relationship between Julius Caesar and his successor, Octavian, who was his adopted son. In this period, adoption was a common way to guarantee one's lineage, and the concept of family transcended the blood affiliations that, later in history, would be necessary to establish lineage.

DYNGLEY AS SCRIBE

William Dyngley's hand is securely identifed in five computus rolls and eighteen manuscripts. All the manuscripts but one were inscribed in the Library Register but at diferent times. The frst registration can be dated c. 1427. All Dyngley's other manuscripts except MS 203 were registered c. 1442, though entries were corrected thereafer. The 1427 registration is signifcant because it documents turning points in Dyngley's career. Two of the deposited works document Dyngley's theological interest, the early versifed Libri sententiarum and Liber super primum sententiarum. Since four of the volumes deposited were demonstrably in Dyngley's possession before they were registered (Table 3.1), it is possible that he also held the other two commentaries super primum, which suggests a scholarly interest as well. The two tabularies registered, MSS 147 and 169.I, document Dyngley's commitment to indexing. As we saw in Chapter Two, Dyngley used MS 147 as a source for indexing six Augustine anthologies, so the 1427 registration provides an ante quem date for those volumes (Table 2.3). The second tabulary, MS 169.I, was essentially an index of patristic exegesis of the entire Bible. Dyngley copied two-thirds of the text, a several-month project, yet instead of keeping the volume he deposited it in the library. The 1427 deposits record mid-career changes of direction, which will be discussed below.

[Written in pencil on the fly leaf]

The Rev: Canon (Honorary) ‘ARTHUR WILLIAM HEADLAM. Died February 24, 1909 aged 82’.

Gyp. died Tuesday September 28 1909 in between 3:30 & 4 p.m. Buried on north side of Galilee chapel.

Rev. Arthur W. Headlam died February 24, 1909.

C. Hodgson Fowler died December 14, 1910.

Tommie died March 31, 1914. Buried near the Flats, Kepier Wood.

Tiddler lost just before Good Friday, 1913.

[Below these notes is an engraving of Odd Fellows’ Hall, Lincoln (1878), a building designed by architects Drury & Mortimer. Footitt worked as an assistant to William Mortimer in his youth.]

This book succeeds my diaries of 1886 to 1896.

Had often all-but given up the diary keeping seeing it was but an odds-&-ends method of recording the things of interest to me. In this book I hope to give brief summings-up or epitomes. This will prevent the accumulation of diaries.

[The passage above has been written in ink over the following text in pencil:]

This book succeeds my diary for 1896, which was preceded by some other ten diaries – the earlier ones being small pocket ones – the latter 4 or 5 are fairly large. I had often all-but given up the diary keeping, seeing that it was but an odds & ends method of recording the things of interest to me & that it often led to my forgetting to note the sequence of events, etc.

This book I hope to be both brief & complete; to prevent the accumulation of diaries.

Sorkin’, The New York Times’ critic Michael Paulson observed in the runup to Lincoln Center's 2023 revival of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's Camelot (1960),

is not the first person to revise the musical … but his deft hand with witty fast paced dialogue and audience nostalgia for Camelot … has made the production one of the most anticipated productions on Broadway this year, with theater mavens eager to see how Sorkin puts his stamp on it.

While not exactly ‘theater mavens’, we and a handful of our medievalist friends gathered in Manhattan for a watch party and were indeed eager to see this Sorkin-stamped Camelot directed by Bartlett Sher.

The British Customs administration during the 1690s was in transformation. Staff numbers were on the rise, new regulations governed port business, and systematic coastal policing became part of Customs responsibilities. Rather than simply internal institutional developments, this transformation is intricately linked to broader trends of that decade. The reign of Mary II and William III witnessed profound changes in the nature of the English state. Such changes are typically identified in relation to constitutional developments, European power politics and fiscal-military policies. The manner of the pair's succession tipped the constitution towards a balanced course with the ascension of parliament and the birth of party politics. The revolution settlement also forced England to commit to continued engagement in continental and colonial theatres of war and European dynastic politics. The costs of such commitment in turn provoked domestic changes that are taken to signal the rise of the fiscal-military state, such as increasing volumes of economic legislation, newly formed or re-formed bodies of financial and fiscal organization and a growing civil and military administration. The revenue departments of Customs and Excise are usually considered to be at the heart of such changes. The Excise is in fact regarded as a model case of administrative reform firmly tending towards fiscal efficiency and modern bureaucracy. The Customs, on the other hand, have generally been seen to fall short of such standards both in terms of revenue returns and administrative efficiency.