George Gifford (c. 1548–1600) was a Puritan preacher at

Maldon Maldon (, locally ) is a town and civil parish on the Blackwater estuary in Essex, England. It is the seat of the Maldon District and starting point of the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation. It is known for Maldon Sea Salt which is produced ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

Life

Gifford was born in

Dry Drayton Dry Drayton is a village and civil parish about 5 miles (8 km) northwest of Cambridge in Cambridgeshire, England, listed as Draitone in the Domesday Book in 1086. It covers an area of . History The ancient parish of Dry Drayton formed betwe ...

, near

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

and attended Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating BA in 1570 and MA in 1573. He afterwards lived at Maldon, but was discharged from the priesthood for refusing to subscribe to Archbishop Whitgift's articles of conformity. He was later reinstated as a lecturer at Maldon, serving there as a lecturer until his death in 1600. It is possible that in 1586 he attended the deathbed of Sir Philip Sidney in the Low Countries, where Gifford was serving as chaplain to the Earl of Essex's troops. Gifford may well have penned ''The Manner of Sir Philip Sidney's Death''.

Works

Gifford wrote some twenty-two published works. These include a translation of

William Fulke William Fulke (; 1538buried 28 August 1589) was an English Puritan divine. Life He was born in London and educated at St John's College, Cambridge graduating in 1557/58. After studying law for six years, he became a fellow at St John's Colleg ...

's ''Praelections vpon the sacred and holy Reuelation of S. Iohn'' (1573; STC:11443); ''A briefe discourse of certaine points of the religion which is among the common sort of Christians, which may bee termed the countrie diunitie'' (1581; STC:11845), which was his most popular work; ''A dialogue betweene a Papist and a Protestant'' (1582; STC:11849); and two works on witchcraft, ''A discourse of the subtill practises of deuilles by witches and sorcerers'' (1587; STC:11852) and ''A Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcrafts'' (1593; STC:11850). It is the last work for which he is best known. Gifford was a moderate in the

witchcraft Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have ...

debate, although he still believed in the existence of witches, and that they should be severely punished. His main concern in the ''Dialogue'' was to ensure more care was taken in witchcraft prosecutions, and to attempt to restrain the persecuting fervour with which witches were sought out and indicted.

References

* Gifford, G., '' A Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcrafts'' (Brighton: Puckrel Publishing, 2007) * McGinnis, T. S., ''George Gifford and the Reformation of the Common Sort – Puritan Priorities in Elizabethan Religious Life'' (Truman State University Press, 2004) * A modern spelling reprint of the ''Dialogue'' is available from Puckrel Publishing.

External links

* *Oxford DNB online
Gifford, George (1547/8–1600), Church of England clergyman and author
ives death year as 1600 {{DEFAULTSORT:Gifford, George 1540s births 1600 deaths 16th-century English Puritan ministers Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge Critics of witch hunting Demonologists English occult writers People from Dry Drayton People from Maldon, Essex Witchcraft in England