Edward Terry and the Demons of India

Raiswell, Richard

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-75738-4_8

Richard Raiswell⁷

Part of the book series: Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic ((PHSWM))

708 Accesses

Abstract

Between 1616 and 1619, the English cleric Edward Terry served as chaplain to Thomas Roe, the English ambassador to the Court of the Great Mughal. During this period, Terry had an opportunity to observe both Muslim and Hindu society and customs firsthand. Upon his return to England, Terry wrote up an account of his observations and experiences, a work he substantially expanded in 1655 and which was published as Voyage to East-India. Raiswell argues that, reflecting on India and its people nearly 30 years later, and through the lens of the sectarianism of the civil war, Terry came to understand the region a land possessed by the devil. While recognizing the devil’s machinations behind Indian society and culture was hardly unique to travelers of this period, Terry went further. Realizing that the devil cannot do anything inconsistent with God’s omnipotence, Terry understood the demonic subversion of India as an extraordinary work of God intended as a statement by the creator about his omnipotence and benevolence, and as a warning to the faithful about the power of the devil, his traps, snares and seductive enticements. In this way, in the context of the rhetoric of creation, India—beyond the limits of Christian society—functions as the geographical analogue of European demoniacs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 119.00; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 159.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 159.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
Nathaniel Homes, Plain Dealing or the Cause and Cure of the Present Evils of the Times (London , 1652), 34. In quoting from early modern texts, I have silently changed “u”s to “v”s and “i”s to “j”s to conform to modern usage.
2.
Edward Terry, A Voyage to East-India (London , 1655), sig. A3^v. All references to Terry are to this text unless otherwise specified.
3.
Terry had given the manuscript to Charles, then the Prince of Wales, who seems to have handed it on to Samuel Purchas who included it in his Hakluytus Posthumus under the title, “A Relation of a Voyage to the Eastern India .” Terry never alludes to this version of his travels in any of his subsequent works, so it is likely that Purchas’s editing was heavy handed and did not meet with the cleric’s approval. On the publishing history of the text, see Richard Raiswell , “Edward Terry and the Calvinist Geography of India ,” Études anglaises: Revue du monde anglophone 70.2 (2017): 167–86.
4.
Terry, Voyage, sig. A3^r.
5.
Ibid., sig. A4^r.
6.
Presumably he is trying here to articulate some poorly understood sense of the caste system. Ibid., 345.
7.
Ibid., 346–7.
8.
Ibid., 347–8. “Bremaw” is probably intended to denote “Brāhmana.” It is likely that some of Terry’s account here is informed by Henry Lord’s A Display of Two Forraigne Sects in the East Indies (London, 1630).
9.
The Brahmins were known in the west through the Alexander legend and became almost stock figures in medieval discourses about the east. They were often regarded favourably, with some suggesting that through their obedience to the laws of nature , they might individually merit salvation. In the twelfth century, Peter Abelard went so far as to argue that together with Kings David, Solomon and Nebuchadnezzar, the Brahmins were like the wheels of a coach carrying the faith in the Trinity throughout the world. Abelard, Theologia Christiana (Migne PL 178:1164B). By Terry’s day, descriptions of the Brahmins could be found in Joannes Boemus’s 1537 Omnium gentium mores, Englished in 1555 as the Fardle of Facions (see sig. L8^r–M2^r) and in the various sixteenth-century printings of The Voyages and Travailes of Sir John Maundevile, Knight. See, for instance, the 1582 version, sig. S4^r–^v.
10.
Terry, Voyage, 346.
11.
Ibid., 344–5.
12.
See Michael Ryan, “Assimilating New Worlds in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (1981): 519–38. Cf. Nathan Johnstone, The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 216.
13.
Calvin, The Institution of the Christian Religion, trans. Thomas Norton (London , 1578), sig. **iii^v. As will become clear below, Terry’s conception of the world is deeply Calvinist. He clearly thought much of the reformer, describing him at one point as “good and reverend,” quoting from a letter he wrote to Cranmer in 1552. See Terry, Voyage, 470. I have used this version of Institutes only because it is the first English version of the full text. Although Terry certainly was an able Latinist, it is more likely that he would turn to this edition than any of the continental French or Latin ones, if only because it would be more readily available.
14.
Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 326–30 and 409–11.
15.
See Mark 1.24 and 9.17–29, Luke 4.33–34 and 8.27–33, and Matt. 8.29. I have dealt with these symptoms in considerably more detail in Richard Raiswell and Peter Dendle, “Demon Possession in Anglo-Saxon and Early Modern England: Continuity and Evolution in Social Context,” Journal of British Studies 47 (October 2008): 738–61.
16.
John Darrell, An Apologie, or Defence of the Possession of William Sommers ([Amsterdam ?], [1599?]), ff. 3^r–4^r. The Sommers possession proved exceptionally controversial in its day. Hostile sources claimed that Sommers had likely been taught how to simulate possession by Darrell, who then publicly dispossessed the youth, bolstering his spiritual credentials and those of his brand of the faith against the state church. The authenticity of the possession—and others tended by Darrell—was the subject of a lively pamphlet war .
17.
I have examined how this dynamic operated in the context of a single possession in Richard Raiswell , “Faking It: A Case of Counterfeit Possession in the Reign of James I,” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 23.3 (1999): 29–48.
18.
On the Protestant conceptions of discretio spirituum see John Darrell, A Detection of that Sinnful, Shamful, Lying, and Ridiculous Discours, of Samuel Harshnet (London , 1600), 34–5.
19.
Brian Levack, The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 58–63 and 206–11.
20.
John Darrell, A True Narration of the Strange and Grevous Vexation by the Devil of 7 Persons in Lancashire and William Somers of Nottingham (London , 1600), 80.
21.
Edward Nyndge, A Booke Declareinge the fearfull Vexation of one Alexander Nyndge (London , 1573), sig. A3^v.
22.
Homes, Plain Dealing, 78.
23.
Other versions of this episode can be found at Mark 1.12–13 and Luke 4.1–13.
24.
“Quotquot in homine sunt corporales affectus, totidem illius tentandi occasiones arripit Satan .” See Calvin, Commentarius in Harmoniam Evangelicam, in Opera, vol. 45, ed. William Baum, Edward Cunitz, and Edward Reus (Brunswick, 1891), 129–31.
25.
Nathan Johnstone , “The Protestant Devil: The Experience of Temptation in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 43.2 (2004): 173–205, esp. 176–8.
26.
Darrell, True Narration, 80.
27.
Pierre Viret , The Worlde possessed with Devils (London , 1583), sig. D8^v.
28.
Ibid., sig. A7^r.
29.
Homes, Plain Dealing, 79.
30.
Clark, Thinking with Demons, 420.
31.
Johnstone, “The Protestant Devil,” 180–1.
32.
Terry, Voyage, 255.
33.
While I cannot be completely certain, judging from the passages where he quotes scripture, it seems likely that Terry used a Geneva bible, for he seems to have drawn occasionally upon its marginal gloss.
34.
Calvin is actually glossing the phrase “Animalis homo” which is rendered as “natural man” in the Geneva translation. See Calvin, “Commentarius in Epistolam Priorem ad Corinthios,” in Opera, vol. 49, ed. William Baum, Edward Cunitz and Edward Reus, 293–574 (Brunswick, 1892), 343–4.
35.
William Perkins , A Godlie and Learned Exposition upon the Whole Epistle of Jude (London , 1606), 126.
36.
Terry, Voyage, 328.
37.
Ibid., 328–9. Cf. Henry Lord, Discoverie of the Sect of the Banians in A Display of two forraigne sects in the East Indies (London , 1630), 41–3. Although Terry has reordered Bremaw’s precepts, his wording is very close to that of Lord. That said, he turns Lord’s time for “washings” in the third precept to “hours for watching.” If Terry is borrowing from Lord, he omits the latter’s second commandment, which is that individuals should make their covenant with God according to each of the five senses.
38.
Terry, Voyage, 329.
39.
Ibid., 249–51.
40.
Terry maintains this on the basis of Romans 2.14–15 which he renders as “that they having not the Law, doe by nature the things conteyned in the law, which shews the works of the law written in their hearts.” Ibid., 258.
41.
Calvin, “Commentarius in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos,” in Opera, vol. 49, ed. William Baum, Edward Cunitz, and Edward Reus, 1–292 (Brunswick, 1892), 38.
42.
Calvin, Institution, II.2.12.
43.
Ibid.
44.
See, for instance, Samuel Otes, An Explanation of the General Epistle of Saint Jude (London , 1633), sig. A5^v.
45.
Terry, Voyage, 433, recte 542.
46.
Ibid., 94 and 321.
47.
Ibid., 326–7.
48.
Ibid., 327.
49.
Ibid., 329.
50.
Ibid.
51.
Cf. Lord, Discoverie of the Sect of the Banians, 46 which makes the same argument but grounds it upon Gen. 9.3.
52.
Calvin, Institution, II.2.18.
53.
Robert Cawdry , A Treasurie or Store-house of Similies (London , 1600), 105.
54.
William Perkins, A commentarie or exposition, upon the five first chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians (London , 1604), 224.
55.
Calvin, Commentarius ad Romanos, on 38. Cf. Institution, II.2.22.
56.
Terry, Voyage, 348–50. The metaphor bears a striking resemblance to one deployed by Calvin: “whence … commeth the stinke in a dead carrion, which hath bin both rotted & disclosed by heate of the sunne? All men do see that it is raised by the beames of the sunne. Yet no man doth therefore say, that the sunbeames do stinke.” See Calvin, Institution, I.17.5. I am grateful to Michelle Brock for pointing this out to me.
57.
Terry, Voyage, 343.
58.
Ibid., 342.
59.
William Attersoll , A Commentarie Upon the Epistle of Saint Paul to Philemon (London , 1612), 296 and Attersoll, “Physicke Against Famine,” in Three Treatises Viz. 1. The Conversion of Nineueh. 2. Gods Trumpet Sounding the Alarum. 3. Physicke Against Famine (London, 1632), 143.
60.
James Cranford , An Abstract of Some Late Characters (London , 1643), 2.
61.
The quotation is from Lactantius’s De vero cultu (PL 6.0664B). Terry, Voyage, 536–7.
62.
Ibid., 537.
63.
Henry Ashwood, “To My Ancient Friend,” in ibid., sig. A8^r.
64.
Calvin, Institution, I.3.1 and I.5.15. Cf. Commentarius ad Romanos, 38.
65.
George Hakewill, Vanitie of the Eie (Oxford, 1608), 13–17. See also Calvin, “Praelectiones in Ezechielis Prophetae,” in Opera, vol. 40, ed. William Baum, Edward Cunitz, and Edward Reus, 13–516 (Brunswick, 1889), 478–9. Cf. Stuart Clark, Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 9–38.
66.
Terry, Voyage, 301.
67.
Calvin takes Exodus 20.4–6 against making and worshipping graven images as a commandment distinct from 20.3, “Thou shalt have none other gods before me.”
68.
Wisdom, 14.26.
69.
Calvin, Institution, II.8.16–17.
70.
“Homely against parell of Idolatry ,” in The seconde Tome of Homelyes (London , 1563), sig. Mmiv^v.
71.
“Homely,” sig. Mmiv^v.
72.
Calvin, Institution, II.4.1.
73.
Joseph Caryl , An Exposition with Practical Observations Continued Upon the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Chapters of the Book of Job (London , 1656), 79.
74.
Ibid., 275–6.
75.
William Perkins , The Combat betweene Christ and the Divell displayed (London , 1606), sig. A2^v.
76.
Terry, Voyage, 541 and 87.
77.
Calvin, Institution, I.14.17.
78.
George Gifford, Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcraftes (London , 1593), sig. D1^v.
79.
Homes, Plain Dealing, 2–5.
80.
Terry, Voyage, 289.
81.
All of Christ’s miracles were intended to be persuasive. But as Graham Twelftree has argued, exorcisms seem to have been the most important of these wonder-workings. See his In the Name of Jesus: Exorcism among Early Christians (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 46.
82.
John Deacon and John Walker, Dialogicall Discourses of Spirits and Divels (London , 1601), 166–8. As Marion Gibson has argued, the relationship between Deacon and Walker, and Darrell was complicated, for all three were identified as amongst the godly. See her Possession, Puritanism and Print: Darrell, Harsnett, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Exorcism Controversy (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2006), 145–50.
83.
Darrell, True Narration, 104 and 67.
84.
Darrell, An Apologie, or Defence, sig. A2^v–A3^r.
85.
Calvin, Institution, 1.14.18. The text is very tightly bound at this point; hence I have supplied the likely readings of line endings.
86.
Darrell, An Apologie, or Defence, f. 12^v.
87.
Nyndge, Vexation of one Alexander Nyndge , A3^v.
88.
A true and most Dreadfull discourse of a woman possessed with the Devill (London , 1584), sig. A4^r–A7^v.
89.
Gifford, Dialogue Concerning Witches, sig. I2^r.
90.
Darrell, True Narration, 80–2.
91.
Viret, Worlde possessed with Devils, sig. E1^r.
92.
Ibid., sig. E2^v.
93.
See, for example, ibid., sig. G1^r.
94.
Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton, Preserved at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire (London , 1911), 165–8. Gibson argues that the author of the note was likely one John Atkinson. Gibson, Possession, Puritanism and Print, 87.
95.
Harsnett’s loathing for Darrell and his notion of the possibility of dispossession by prayer and fasting means that his account has to be taken with more than a pinch of salt in such matters. But given the earlier, unpublished note, it seems clear that Sommers’s fits were being glossed. [Samuel Harsnett ], A Discovery of the Fraudulent Practises of John Darrel (London , 1599), 115–17.
96.
Viret, Worlde possessed with Devils, sig. E2^v–E3^r.
97.
Ibid., sig. E7^r; cf. Darrell, True Narration, 82.
98.
Darrell, True Narration, 68; cf., for instance, Calvin, Institution, I.2.1.
99.
Darrell, True Narration, 87.
100.
Ibid., 89.
101.
See Calvin, Institution, II.4.5.
102.
Darrell, True Narration, 80–1.
103.
A true and most Dreadfull discourse, sig. A3^r.
104.
Homes, Plain Dealing, 35.
105.
Viret, Worlde possessed with Devils, sig. C2^v–C4^v.
106.
I have developed this argument more fully in my “Edward Terry and the Calvinist Geography of India .”
107.
Calvin, Institution, I.5.8.
108.
John Calvin, “Commentarii in librum Psalmorum Pars Posterior: Ps. XCL ad CL,” in Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 60, ed. William Baum, Edward Cunitz, and Edward Reuss, 2–442 (Brunswick, 1887), 85.
109.
Calvin, Institution, 1.5.1.
110.
Ibid., 1.5.9.
111.
Ibid., 1.14.20; cf. 1.6.2.
112.
Susan Schreiner , Theater of His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1995), 65.
113.
Calvin, Institution, 1.5.13–4.
114.
Serene Jones, Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 28.
115.
Calvin, Institution, I.16.3.
116.
Calvin, “Commentarii in librum Psalmorum,” 86.
117.
Ibid., 85.
118.
Ibid., 85–6.
119.
Ibid., 138.
120.
Terry, Merchants and Mariners, 10.
121.
Ibid., 10–11.
122.
Ibid., 23.
123.
Ibid., 27.
124.
Terry, Voyage, 125.
125.
Ibid., 141–2.
126.
Ibid., 352.
127.
Ibid., 452–3.
128.
Ibid., 460 and 471, recte 523.
129.
Ibid., 452–3. He had done much the same in his 1649 sermon where he is concerned to stress to his audience of merchants and mariners the “inference, or application” of their experiences on the high seas. See Terry, Merchants, 17. This point is developed more fully by Daniel Carey in his “Edward Terry’s A Voyage to East-India (1655): A Chaplain’s Narrative of the Mughal World,” Études anglaises: Revue du monde anglophone 70.2 (2017): 187–208.
130.
Terry, Voyage, 539.
131.
Clark, Thinking with Demons, 43–68 esp. 57.
132.
See Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 5.10.87–93; cf. 8.4.2. Terry has clearly read parts of Quintilian , for he cites him at 471, recte 523.
133.
Thomas Wilson , Arte of Rhetorique , f. 99^r, recte 69^r.
134.
James VI. Daemonologie (Edinburgh, 1597), 55.
135.
Terry, Voyage, 92.
136.
Ibid., 118.
137.
Ibid., 118–19.
138.
Ibid., 104.
139.
Ibid., 143. It was generally accepted on the basis of the testimony of antiquity that Indian elephants were larger than African. See, for instance, Pliny the Elder, Natural History, trans. and ed. H. Rackham (London : Heinemann, 1979), VIII.9.27.
140.
Terry, Voyage, 132.
141.
Ibid., sig. A6^r.
142.
Ibid., 287–8.
143.
Ibid., 536.
144.
Ibid., 264.
145.
Ibid., 324.
146.
Jan Huygen van Linschoten, Itinerario: voyage ofte schipvaert van Jan Huygen van Linschoten 1579–1592 (Amsterdam, 1596), after 60.
147.
Terry, Voyage, 325.
148.
Ibid., 326.
149.
Ibid., 325.
150.
Terry, Pseudeleutheria, or Lawlesse Liberty (London , 1646), 18.
151.
Terry, Voyage, 325.
152.
Ibid., 394.
153.
Ibid., 394–6 and The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India , 1615–19, ed. William Foster, rev. ed. (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1990), 378–9.
154.
Terry, Voyage, 406–7; cf. Embassy, 190–1.
155.
Terry, Voyage, 296.
156.
Ibid., 489.
157.
Ibid., 370, 408, and 435.
158.
Ibid., 465. In his 1646 sermon, he likens the situation to “that confused Chaos before the Creation, where heighth and depth, light and darknesse were mingled together.” Terry, Pseudeleutheria, 5.
159.
Terry, Voyage, 271 and 440.
160.
Ibid., 469.
161.
Thomas Edwards , Gangraena: Or a Catalogue and Discovery of Many of the Errours, Heresies, Blasphemies and Pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this Time (London , 1646), 153.
162.
Ibid., 154.
163.
As Corinne Lefèvre has argued, Terry left no definitive statement about his religious identity, or his sympathies in the civil war . See her “Entre despotisme et vertu: les représentations de l’Inde dans A Voyage to East-India d’Edward Terry” in Rêver d’Orient, connaître l’Orient: visions de l’Orient dans l’art et la literature britanniques, ed. Isabelle Gadoin and Marie-Élise Palmier-Chatelain (Lyon: ENS Éditions, 2008), 131–46 on 135. That said, he managed to hold his position as rector at Holy Cross Church in Greenford from 1630 to 1660 seemingly without incident. His son succeeded him in the position but resigned shortly afterwards, unwilling to accept the new Book of Common Prayer . Peter Hounsell and Frances Hounsell, Holy Cross Church, Greenford: A History and Guide (Greenford, Middlesex: The Parochial Church Council of the Parish of Greenford Magna, 2016), 30–1.
164.
Terry, Voyage, 470.
165.
Ibid., 467.
166.
Edwards, Gangraena, 152.
167.
Terry, Voyage, 483.
168.
Ibid., 484.
169.
Ibid., 490–1.
170.
Ibid., 454.
171.
Ibid., 538.
172.
Ibid., 86–7.
173.
Ibid., 87. Terry’s account of the temple and its devotions is based upon his conversations with the traveller Thomas Coryate, with whom he shared a tent in Mandu. See 58–60.
174.
Ibid., 87; cf. sig. A6^r.
175.
Ibid., 269.
176.
Ibid.; cf. 554, recte 543.
177.
Ibid., 462.
178.
Ibid., 463.
179.
Ibid., 463–4.
180.
Ibid., sig. A5^v.
181.
Wilson, Arte of Rhetorique, f. 58^r.
182.
Terry, Voyage, sig. A4^r.
183.
Ibid., 490, recte 520.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Canada
Richard Raiswell

Authors

Richard Raiswell
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Richard Raiswell .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA, USA
Michelle D. Brock
University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PE, Canada
Richard Raiswell
Brandon University, Brandon, MB, Canada
David R. Winter

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Raiswell, R. (2018). Edward Terry and the Demons of India. In: Brock, M., Raiswell, R., Winter, D. (eds) Knowing Demons, Knowing Spirits in the Early Modern Period. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75738-4_8

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75738-4_8
Published: 01 August 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-75737-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-75738-4
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics