Intends to increase our understanding of the eighteenth-century established clergy, both in England and Ireland. This biography of Bishop Francis Hutchinson (1669-1739) provides a detailed portrait of an early eighteenth century Irish bishop and witchcraft theorist.

As Hutchinson was an unusually active cleric, a detailed study of his early clerical career yields a unique insight into how the national directives of the Church of England at the centre were implemented in the localities by reforming clergy, while an examination of his later career gives us a better understanding of how, and in what circumstances, members of the English clergy were promoted to Irish sees and what they did once they took up residence in them. This book will be of particular interest to academics and students in the areas of history of witchcraft, and the religious, political and social history of Britain and Ireland in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Preface
Introduction
Part I - England
1. Childhood and early career, 1660 - c. 1690
2. The national church in a Suffolk parish, St. James', Bury St. Edmunds, 1692-1720
3. 'A well affected man': Hutchinson and party politics, 1700-20
4. Angels and demons: the mental world of an eighteenth-century Anglican pastor
5. Hutchinson and witchcraft: An historical essay concerning witchcraft (1718)
Part II - Ireland
6. The bishop of Down and Connor and the established Church and state in Ireland, 1721-39
7. 'Darkness must be expell'd by bringing in the light': the conversion of Irish Catholics, c. 1721-34
8. 'Improve everything that is improveable': the social, economic, and cultural 'improvement' of Ireland and the Irish, 1721-39
Conclusion
Index.