The Boy of Bilson: William Perry's Faked Possession, Staffordshire, 1620

Lent, 1620, in Bilson, Staffordshire, the town now called Bilston. William Perry was about 13, the son of Thomas Perry, a yeoman. Not far from his father's house, the boy met an old man. The stranger called himself "Thomas," wore a grey beard and carried glass or pot wares. What he taught the boy would draw crowds, priests and a bishop.

About the Easter following, the fits began. In those fits William Perry appeared both deaf and blind, writhing his mouth aside, groaning and panting. Pinches and pricks drew nothing from him, and he was almost mute. Then he cast out of his mouth rags, thread, straw and crooked pins, and his urine ran black, like ink. When anyone read the first verse of St John's Gospel, "In the beginning was the Word," the fits seized him again.

In lucid moments he named a neighbour. Ione Cocke, he said, had bewitched him. Word spread. As Perry later put it, "much people did reſort vnto him, and brought him many good things."

Three Catholic priests came and questioned the spirit inside him. If there were three devils, he should give three knocks. The boy held up three fingers. Asked whether Catholics would go to heaven, he lifted up his hands. One priest beat him about the head and face with his stole, until he felt black and blue.

After about three weeks they could do him no good. On 1 July 1620 their account, A faithfull Relation, was signed "J. W.", a name attributed to Master Wheeler. On 10 August 1620 Ione Cocke stood trial at the Stafford summer assizes. She was freed by the inquest.

The boy was then placed with Thomas Morton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, at Eccleshall Castle. Morton and his secretary, Richard Baddeley, watched closely. His pulse stayed steady during the fits. He slept through the night. He swallowed and spat normally.

Then the Bishop spoke to him. "Boy, it is either thou, or the diuel, that abhorreſt thoſe words of the Goſpel." He read, in Greek, the twelfth verse of the first chapter of St John's Gospel. Perry took it for the first verse and fell into a trance. When the real first verse was read, he was not troubled at all.

The household watchers did the rest. They caught him mixing ink with his urine and slipping the inkhorn into a private place. On 8 October 1620 he confessed, and again on 13 October. The old man had taught him everything. His reason was a schoolboy's: "I being willing not to come at ſchoole, for feare of whipping, was deſirous to learne ſuch tricks." He liked the gifts, too.

26 July 1621. Stafford summer assizes. William Perry asked pardon of God. He asked the woman he had accused to forgive him. Then he asked the county's forgiveness.

In 1622 Baddeley published The Boy of Bilson, framed as "A true discouery of the late notorious impostures of certaine Romish priests in their pretended exorcisme." Modern scholars read the case through the rivalry of Protestant and Catholic. Philip C. Almond edited the collection in 2004 as one of the key possession texts of its age. A sequel in 1698 set Susanna Fowles of Hammersmith beside him. In 1762 William Hogarth engraved a shoeblack vomiting hobnails and iron staples, a figure some identify as the Boy of Bilston.