To the Puritan family and household of Alexander Nyndge in Herringswell in Suffolk, it appeared that he might have been mad. On 20 January 1573, we are informed, he demonstrated a whole range of behaviours sufficient to lead them to this suspicion. His chest and body swelled, his eyes bulged, he shook, he refused to eat, he bashed his head and other parts of his body against the ground and the bedstead, he gnashed his teeth and foamed at the mouth, a lump ran up and down his body between the skin and the flesh, he was horribly disfigured, and he showed enormous strength.

Alexander's brother Edward, Master of Arts from Oxford University, read the symptoms quite differently. He saw them as the result, not of madness, but of Alexander's being possessed by a demon. It was a diagnosis which Alexander himself accepted: ‘Alexander Nyndge, having his speech then at liberty, said to the same Edward, “Brother, he is marvellously afraid of you, therefore I pray you, stand by me.”’ Alexander now speaks from the place which Edward has constructed for him and in the role which Edward has determined for him, as a person possessed by the devil. He physically shows the demon within: ‘And within a little time after, the body of the said Alexander, being as wondrously transformed as it was before, much like the picture of the Devil in a play, with a horrible roaring voice, sounding Hell-hound, was most horribly tormented.