The Sorcerer's Tale: Faith and Fraud in Tudor England

Abstract

The sorcerer in Alec Ryrie's agreeable little book is one Gregory Wisdom, whose main profession was that of an ‘empiric’, somebody practising physic without belonging to the Royal College of Physicians; in Wisdom's case because he did not have the Latin to enable him to absorb the medical teaching of the ancients. He circulated among the gentry of the home counties, and particularly among their wives, probably acquiring some of their goods but not obviously doing magic with or for them. His tale as a sorcerer, which as recorded is not a long one, occurred at the end of the reign of King Henry VIII, when Henry Lord Neville, son and heir of the Earl of Westmorland, was arrested because, contrary to an Act of 1542, he had used Wisdom's more under-the-counter services to acquire a foolproof method of winning at cards, to find some buried treasure and finally to murder his wife and father. These operations were accompanied by ritual performances, and cost Neville, and earned Wisdom, a great deal of money; none of them, of course, was successful. Perhaps because the Act in question was repealed at the accession of Edward VI shortly afterwards, Neville got off lightly for his offence, Wisdom apparently scot-free: he pursued his legitimate business and some decades later was admitted, evidently against opposition, to the Royal College.