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

by Alec Ryrie

An earl's son, plotting murder by witchcraft; conjuring spirits to find buried treasure; a stolen coat embroidered with pure silver; crooked gaming-houses and brothels; a terrifying new disease, and the self-trained surgeon who claims he can treat it. This is the world of Gregory Wisdom, a physician, magician, and consummate con-man in sixteenth-century London. Drawing on previously unknown documents to reconstruct this extraordinary man's career, Alec Ryrie takes us through the cut-throat business of early modern medicine, down to Tudor London's gangland of fraud and organized crime; from the world of Renaissance magi and Kabbalistic conjurers to street-corner wizards; and into the chaotic, exhilarating religious upheavals of the Reformation. On the way, we learn how Tudor England's dignified public face and its rapacious underworld were intimately connected to each other. Gregory Wisdom's career is an object lesson in how to conjure up wealth and respectability from nothing in a turbulent age. Praised as "an excellent snapshot of a time intrigued by the spiritual realm" (Los Angeles Times), this is a unique glimpse into a world intoxicated by new ideas.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Tudor Period

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Alec Ryrie is a prize-winning historian of the Reformation and Protestantism. He is the author of Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt and Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World. Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University and Professor of Divinity at Gresham College, London.

Reviews

[Leanda Lisle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The study of alchemy can pay off. It does so for the Sorcerer in Alec Ryrie’s tale, and it has for Ryrie himself. Murder and magic, peers and prostitutes, are brought together in a Tudor story that glitters with wit and erudition. Ryrie has produced a veritable nugget of gold.

The tale opens with young Henry, Lord Neville in prison, accused of conspiring to murder his wife and father with magic. He is, however, less the villain of this crime than a victim of a con man: a member of London’s criminal underworld who was also a physician and sorcerer. Gregory Wisdom, as he appears to have been called, is almost as shadowy as the spirits he conjured, but following his trail through the sources shines light into the darkest corners of Tudor London.

Peopled with wizards, cardsharps, and naïve country boys, the sense of turbulent life in this gangland is reminiscent of Terry Pratchett’s fantastical Disc World series: although often bizarre, it is so human you feel you could walk into it. Ryrie can be as funny as Pratchett too - but make no mistake, this is serious history. It is the deploying of deep research and numerous examples that makes the Sorcerer’s Tale so vivid.

Wisdom had first got his hooks into Neville by claiming he could persuade angels to make a ring to bring him luck at cards. In describing the theories behind such a ring Ryrie introduces us to the cons, but also to the learned side of magic. Upmarket sorcerers were mathematicians, physicians, masters of ancient texts, and it becomes clear that Wisdom the con man and thief believed his spells might work. When he offered to murder Neville’s wife and father with magic, he hoped to achieve it.

Ryrie argues it was the confusion loosed at the Reformation that gave magic its particular popularity in Tudor England. Catholicism has become associated in our minds with magic, but this Sorcerer was a (not very Godly) Protestant, and we are reminded that the persistent claim that sixteenth century Protestants were the precursors of rationalism, pluralism and tolerance, is a myth.

The Sorcerer’s Tale is as brief as Dava Sobel’s Longitude, and like that best-seller, has the feel of an extended essay. Ryrie’s story is, perhaps, less well sustained, but it is much funnier and unpinned by finer scholarship: the ideal little book for the bedside, or the train, the general reader, or the would-be magician.

An edited version of this review was published by History Today in 2008

[Georgie Laws · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished this bitch… god!!!! Honestly kinda a funny story but you’d need some information about witches and the early modern period to have it all make a lot more sense. But an entertaining story that tries to capture the world of the early modern period and all the weird nuances and fluidity of the time.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange case of con artistry in the 16th century, which survives in an unusually full legal account, provides the lens through which Ryrie examines Tudor England. He chases the chief perpetrator of the fraud, whom he identifies as a man named Gregory Wisdom, through the shadowy thickets of the Tudor underworld, touching on alchemy, medicine, astrology, prostitution, theft, magic, religious belief and practice, and all sorts of other interesting things along the way.

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

In such an alien, exhilarating new world, even the most level-headed intellects could become intoxicated by possibility. In our own age, scepticism and disbelief seem intellectually sophisticated; in the sixteenth century, they seemed self-limiting and perverse. It was unmistakable that there were more things in heaven and earth than had been dreamed of in the old philosophies. Credulity, or at least a willingness to believe, was the only sensible way of looking at the world. And when you have adopted a new mathematics, a new astronomy, a new geography and a new religion, why balk at a new magic?
- Alec Ryrie, The Sorcerer's Tale (176)

In 1546, a thin-witted aristocrat was thrown in prison on suspicion of having attempted to murder his wife and father by writing their names in an honest-to-God Death Note. From the confines of his cell, he dictated to a secretary a remarkably self-abasing, eight page letter detailing his account of what had really happened. The story paints him in so unflattering a light that we can assume it contains more truth than falsehood, as it tells the farcical tale of how he was repeatedly swindled by a man named 'Wisdom', who initially claimed to be a magician that could make him a magic ring capable of guaranteeing his luck at the card games he was so quickly wasting his dwindling fortune on.

After prevaricating on making the ring (claiming that the angels he was subcontracting only took a break between 3-4am from their daily God-praising schedule to work on the device), Wisdom's ring initially seemed to work at the first table Henry tried it on, until it didn't, at which point Wisdom politely enquired whether Henry had mixed women with his cards - a foolish error, when working with angels, of course, because now they needed to make another ring. Oh, and whilst he was at it, he asked, would Henry be interested in a spell that could instantly teach him how to play the lute?

One thing led to another and the next thing he knew he was half-way through price-haggling on how to invoke an angel to magically kill his wife and free him up to find a less frigid partner, whilst also giving his bastard of a father a swift end so that he (and, by extension, Wisdom) could get their hands on his money.

Lord Henry (of course) was horrified, horrified at this idea! But, alas, a law passed in 1542 meant that one faced the death penalty for merely consulting a magician, which the little matter of the rings had already nixed him on, so, you know, what's a guy to do?

Alec Ryrie, having stumbled on this letter in the archives during an unrelated project, spent several years trying to track down any details about the other characters in the story. Remarkably, he managed to find out who Wisdom really was (a physician-magician who was actually in the midst of dealing with the aftermath of another scam even as he inveigled himself into Lord Henry's household), but these scraps of information would never have been enough to write a biography of the character. Instead, these details are more useful for what they tell us about the murkier undersides of the late Tudor culture that Lord Henry and Gregory Wisdom inhabited.

The result is an exemplary work of micro-history, first telling Lord Henry's story, then using it as an launching point from which to explore the varied Tudor subcultures that his misadventure cut across, simultaneously allowing this tale to illuminate those subcultures whilst the accumulating contextual detail gives us greater clarity on the intricacies of Gregory Wisdom's own life story.

In the process we learn about the fraught and bitterly contested realm of Tudor healthcare (half-arcane woo nonsense, half-priviledged gatekeeping of dangerously ineffective Roman remedies, with the barbers sawing your limbs off probably knowing more than the doctors themselves in an era where 'empiric' was used by the medical establishment as an insult); the astounding ingenuity of organised criminal groups in the Tudor underworld; the intellectual history of early modern magic, particularly in terms of how the illiterate or semi-literate classes appropriated its arcana downstream of its upper-class production; and finally how the changing religious climate of England enabled such magical beliefs to erupt so spectacularly in an age of mass ideological tumult.

From the politics of syphilis to the theology of 'priestcraft' as a kind of black magic, this is a lot of ground for Ryrie to cover in just 183 pages, but he manages his material dextrously, staying sensitive to the ambiguities that so vexed those who tried to think through scary and uncertain ideas in an especially terrifying and exhiliating era. At the same time, he never loses sight of how bizarre or funny these ideas or episodes could be, and his passionate delight for the story he tells shines through on every page, particularly as he shows off the archival machinery of how he linked these disparate documents to put this narrative together. This isn't just fun history; it's responsible history, showing how the sausage gets made and making that process part of the magic.

[Dee Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

ALMOST reads like a novel, but this is strictly a historical account of some of the schemes perpetrated by one Gregory Wisdom. In the mid-16th century, Wisdom was a member of the Paint/Stainers Guild, some of whom regularly dabbled on the side as apothecaries. Wisdom eventually became a physician, but this work establishes the seamy sides of apothecaries, surgeons/barbers--and physicians, by exploring some of their lawsuits. There seems to have been othing Wisdom wouldn't dream up to get a hold of more money, including feigning magics through astrology, complicated strategies to gull the wealthy--even to planning deaths.

He was apparently quite able to lie his way through the courts, too--happily for him, his victims were often as shady as he was. The systems in place, and the laws that kept changing, also allowed for corruption on a wide scale.

One frustration, however--the rulings of the courts weren't recorded!! So we don't know what finally occurred in many of these suits.We can clearly see a pattern in Wisdom, however, and I appreciated the author's hunt in research.

[Tomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an entertaining little book. Ryrie said in the prologue that he would try to keep it short; I wish he had written more! Lots of information about the seamier side of the Tudor world - gambling, prostitution, use of magic, and other vices. It was interesting to see how those things could be tied to the religious changes going on at the time.

[Adrian Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining little historical case study exploring some murky magical and criminal corners of Tudor England.

[Tina Ambury · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read

[AphroPhantasmal · Rating 5 out of 5]

At just under 200 pages, this delectable slice of micro-history is a quick read. Lovers of occultism and its role in western civilization will learn new names while giving silent acknowledgement to greats like Agrippa, Ficino, and Dee. But, where many texts in the genre of historical western esotericism tend to stick to either dry facts or fantastical claims, "The Sorcerer's Tale" finds a delicate balance between the two.

The role of magic in Reformation England is viewed against the back drop of a tyrannical Henry VIII, sputtering Papal influence, and the chaos of intellectual and social change. The first sparks of the enlightenment did little to damper the study of natural magic and astronomy but may spurred it on. The removal of the yoke of Catholicism as a governing power within Britain provided just the right amount of tinder to the flames of theological and philosophical metamorphosis.

What we can never forget in our modern age is where there is fire someone is likely to get burned. Ryrie dissolves and coagulates the worlds of the academic and the criminal, where the occult tantalized members of society from all strata of life. It was just as simple to be fooled by a charlatan offering a magic ring as it was to be taken in by a dishonest soothsayer promising buried treasure from trapped spirits. Protestant and Catholic alike believed in this magic of the Renaissance whether for good or ill.

The author's writing style is fluid and conversational. Like any good story teller, he draws you in with quick hooks, tantalizing details, and witty turns of phrase. Ryrie also delivers a fresh view of the occult during this period of English history. While many academics tend to focus on the Ceremonial Magician OR the Cunning-Wo/men as if they were two wholly separate entities, Ryrie weaves a tapestry of daily life with greed, lust, fear, and magic threaded throughout in a such a way that these kinds of black and white distinctions seem too modern to have been the reality.

In this case fact really is better than fiction.

[Gerald Sinstadt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alex Ryrie's title and the cover illustration of Caravaggio's The Cardsharps hint at a different book. The central characters are Lord Henry Neville and a shadowy figure named Gregory Wisdom.

The first chapter describes Wisdom's offer to contrive the murder of Neville's wife, and the consequences of the agreement they enter into. And that is the story. Succeeding chapters examine different elements of the world in which the conspiracy unfolded: Tudor low-life, 16th Century medicine, the influence of magic and religion. The author's research has clearly been voluminous and the picture he paints fill in many dark and unfamiliar corners of the era.

Ryrie is Reader in Church History at Durham University so it is unsurprising that his underlying approach is theological, though not stuffily so - the book does not lack humour. The caveat comes at the end in the chapter headed Conclusion. He writes "Most of what we think we know about him [Wisdom] is uncertain ...the resulting pictures are to some extent an illusion ... this is a game with few certainties." That is honest enough and it should not deter readers from a scholarly insight

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great little book on crime and cons and magic during Tudor days in not-so-merry olde England. This is about a credulous (possibly downright stupid) nobleman trying to rid himself of inconvenient people with expensive magic. His luck in this deadly effort is so bad it's almost comedic, think I Love You To Death, the 1990 movie where Keanu Reeves and William Hurt are stupid hit men trying to kill Kevin Kline.

There's gambling, syphilis, magic, murder - and it's all true, and after reading its few pages I walked away with a far clearer, more vivid picture of Tudor society.

Read it together with Mary Sharratt's wonderful novel Daughters of Witching Hill, also a great book and an eye-opener about those long-ago times.

[Kari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alec Ryrie pieces together the scant information available in order to tell the story of physician and magician Gregory Wisdom. This clearly required some detailed detective work, with fragments of information used to produce plausible deductions and suggestions to fill some of the gaps in the tale. In doing so Ryrie opens up and explores the wider world of Tudor England. The reader is giving an insight into the background of many other groups such as con-men, astrologers, doctors and religious figures. This is an interesting little book and a quick, easy read that will fascinate anyone with an interest in magic and fraud as well as wider areas of Tudor social history.

[Ubiquitousbastard · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't bad for a look at Tudor England's society, but honestly, the title was misleading and therefore disappointing. I was hoping to go more into the details of the crime(s) and the people involved and less in the whole Protestant/Catholic, London Underworld aspects. That's what most of the book was about, so I was greatly disappointed and felt like I'd finished the book when I was only a quarter of the way through.

If you're going to write about a crime to describe a society's outlying aspects, at least give it a boring name so I don't get my hopes up.

[Alex Sarll]

One gullible young Tudor noble's encounter with a hustler whose bag of tricks included the occult becomes, with the application of a little historical detective work, a window on an age in upheaval. Fascinating reading, and a promising first attempt on the large number of OUP hardbacks concerning odd corners of history which I accumulated from the much-missed free box.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting composite portrait of a fascinating character, placed in well-researched historical context, and an enjoyable peek into the murky depths of the criminal underworld of sixteenth-century London.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting read. It is a history book, written with a historical context, not a historical voice. It doesn't read like Ferris Bueller's teacher would teach. I recommend it for anyone, not just history majors.

[Old-Barbarossa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slight book with an interesting insight into the period.
Bit dry at times.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this small slice of Tudor era history. It had a little of everything but was short enough to read in one afternoon. There are so many interesting personalities in history and learning more about the mostly unknown Gregory Wisdom was a fun glimpse of this one.

I was a little surprised by the copy editing errors since this is a OUP book but I guess all publishers are cutting corners.