The counterfeit demoniac: The story of William Sommers

Abstract

When A brief Narration was published in 1598, the exorcist John Darrell and his colleague George More had been convicted of counterfeiting, were ‘deposed from the Ministry, and committed to close prison’, awaiting sentencing. George More was to die in prison. John Darrell was out of prison but in hiding some two years after. Darrell had been convicted, upon the word of William Sommers, that he had taught Sommers how to counterfeit possession when Sommers was a young man of around nineteen or twenty years of age. A brief Narration is the first of thirteen works, the publication of which was motivated by the case of Sommers and the trial of Darrell. It begins with an editorial introduction by a George Cole, written after the trial of Darrell. A narrative account of the possession of William Sommers is followed by a series of arguments for the genuine possession of Sommers against reasons to the contrary which were written between the Archbishop of York's Commission in March 1598 and Darrell's trial in June of that year. These two sections may have originally come from the pen of John Darrell in prison. The text concludes with a number of depositions given at the York Commission by witnesses to Sommers' behaviour as a demoniac. Because of the large number of texts around the story of William Sommers, and the controversy surrounding the case, it is difficult to construct the story. But the broad outline in A brief Narration is consistent with other accounts.