Perhaps the most significant case of demonic possession from the 17th-century involved a 19-year-old British gardener named Richard Dugdale. This was during the time when the Protestants and the Catholics were still in conflict in England, and as with other cases of possession during this period, Dugdale’s became a bone of contention between the two denominations. Dugdale’s case became a cause celebre, resulting in not just large crowds descending on the Surrey farm where it occurred, but later in a number of the short pamphlets that were popular at the time.
It all started on the morning of April 29th, 1689, when young Dugdale visited the home of Thomas Jolly, a neighbor who also happened to be a Protestant minister. Dugdale’s complaint? That he was suffering from fits of rage.
Dugdale, by all accounts a normal young man who was properly pious, had tried fasting to rid himself of these fits, to no avail. Under examination, Dugdale confessed that almost a year earlier he had attended a celebration (the Feast of St. James, held in late July) involving dancing, and had called upon the Devil to make him “a good Dancer.” Not long after, during a drinking bout with his father, Richard got into a scuffle with another young man; although he was supposedly uninjured enough to find his way home afterward, he soon began to suffer pains in his side and see visions, which included great offerings of food and riches (which he refused).
Within a week he discovered that he had developed an irresistible urge to dance, and he continued to see visions, like a man’s head floating alongside him. Richard and his father sought the help of both a doctor (who was useless) and a “wise man,” but Richard was unable to speak in the presence of the latter. Richard began to suffer fits more frequently, and was occasionally “extremely rude” in church. During his fits, witnesses said the demoniac was hurled about, and his eyes rolled back until only the whites were visible. When ministers came to pray over him, he could raise himself from the floor without the use of his limbs. Dugdale’s symptoms, in fact, sound like a laundry list from The Exorcist, as he spewed huge balls of phlegm, uttered “the bitterest execrations and blasphemies”, spoke languages he’d never studied, emitted a variety of animalistic sounds, and raged in particular about one minister, Carrington (although the demon also called him Carlisle, predicting where the minister would eventually be assigned).
Unlike The Exorcist, however, other phenomena were soon recorded in the vicinity. Guests going home at night after visiting the demoniac encountered apparitions of boys that abruptly vanished; Dugdale also made predictions that invariably came true, or revealed facts that he couldn’t have known. Crowds began appearing at the Surrey house, so many (at one point the phrase “hundreds or thousands” is used[1]) that a post in the barn was broken and the roof came down (fortunately no one was injured).
