ABSTRACT
In 1573 a tract was published in London entitled A booke declaring the fearful vexation of one Alexander Nyndge, which detailed the possession case of a young boy from the county of Suffolk. During the January of that year, according to the pamphlet, the child suffered his first ‘fit and vexacion’.1 About seven o’clock during one winter evening, in front of his parents and brothers, Alexander’s body began to swell, his eyes stared vacantly and his back began ‘bendinge inward to his bellie’. Edward Nyndge, the child’s brother and the author of the text, ‘beyng bolder then other of the companye’, immediately proclaimed that the child was demonically possessed and that the only course of action was for spectators, family and friends to pray to God for his safe deliverance, using the words of the Bible to drive out the evil spirit.2 According to the text, the child suffered greatly during his affliction, experiencing such symptoms as occasionally losing speech and the control of his body. The pamphlet tells of how the boy declared to his brother Edward that the possessing spirit was ‘marueilous afraid of you therfore I praye you stande by mee’. Edward advised his younger brother to ‘earnestlie repent thee of thy sinnes and praye to God for the forgeuenes of the same’, declaring that he would give his life for him to be saved from the demonological afflictions; ‘my life for thyne … the Deuill can not hurt thee, no rather then hee should I will go to hell with thee’. The spirit then, the text tells, attacked Alexander even ‘more cruelly’.3
