Download or read book Witchcraft, Witch-hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England written by Peter Elmer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging overview of the place of witchcraft and witch-hunting in the broader culture of early modern England. Based on a mass of new evidence extracted from a range of archives, both local and national, it seeks to relate the rise and decline of belief in witchcraft, alongside the legal prosecution of witches, to the wider political culture of the period. Building on the seminal work of scholars such as Stuart Clark, Ian Bostridge, and Jonathan Barry, it demonstrates how learned discussion of witchcraft, as well as the trials of those suspected of the crime, were shaped by religious and political imperatives in that period.