), a domestic gardener and servant from Surey, near Whalley, Lancashire, became notable as a result of the publication of a number of pamphlets describing his apparent possession by the devil, and subsequent exorcism.
On returning to his master's house he professed to have seen apparitions, and the following day, being unwell and lying down, he declared that he had been alarmed by the door opening and a mist entering, followed by various supernatural appearances.
Meanwhile Dugdale's fame had spread abroad, and he was visited by several thousand persons, some dozens making declarations of his strange condition before Lord Willoughby and other magistrates.
It was claimed for Dugdale that he foretold future events, spoke languages of which he was ignorant, and sometimes with two voices at once, was at times wildly blasphemous, and at others preached sermons, that he was possessed of extraordinary strength, and was sometimes ‘as light as a bag of feathers, and at others as heavy as lead,’ that he vomited a large hair broom, and did a number of other miraculous things.
[1] Baxter and Mather were so impressed that they wished to quote his case in their works on witchcraft; but Lord Chief Justice Holt is said to have discovered that the whole affair was an imposition.