John Darrell

John Darrell (born 1562 in or near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, England, died after 1602) was an Anglican clergyman noted for his Puritan views and his practice as an exorcist, which led to imprisonment.

Exorcist Darrell was a sizar of Queens' College, Cambridge. In 1586 he was called to help by Isabel Foljambe and he exorcised a girl in Derbyshire, and published an account of his work. In 1596–1597 he conducted further exorcisms, mainly at St Mary's Church, Nottingham, where he was appointed curate by Robert Aldridge, but also in Lancashire, where with others he exorcised demons from seven members of the household of Nicholas Starkey in Tyldesley on 17 and 18 March 1597, Marion Gibson, Possession, Puritanism and Print: Darrell, Harsnett, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Exorcism Controversy, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2006, Peter Lake and Michael C. Questier, Conformity and orthodoxy in the English church 1560-1660, Boydell & Brewer, 2000, , chap.2 Diane Purkiss, The witch in history: early modern and twentieth-century representations, Routledge, 1996, , p. 189 Corinne Holt Sawyer (1962). The case of John Darrell. Minister and Exorcist. University of Florida Press. J. A. Sharpe, The bewitching of Anne Gunter: a horrible and true story of deception, witchcraft, murder, and the King of England, Taylor & Francis, 2000, , p. 148 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1973 ), pp. 576–580 and passim Brendan C. Walsh, The English Exorcist: John Darrell and the Shaping of Early Modern English Protestant Demonology, New York; NY: Routledge, 2021,