author
Alexander Roberts
d. 1620
Best known for his 1616 work on witchcraft, this early 17th-century English clergyman wrote in the tense atmosphere of the witch trials. His surviving book offers a vivid glimpse into how fear, religion, and superstition could shape everyday life.
1 Audiobook
A Treatise of Witchcraft
by Alexander Roberts
About the author
An English divine identified in his book as "B.D. and preacher of God's Word at King's Lynn in Norfolk," he is chiefly remembered for A Treatise of Witchcraft (1616). The work combines a broader argument about witchcraft with a detailed account of the case of Mary Smith, making it one of the period's memorable documents of belief and persecution.
Although not much biographical detail is easy to confirm, his writing places him firmly in the world of early modern Protestant ministry and public moral instruction. Today, he is read less as a literary celebrity than as a revealing witness to the anxieties of Jacobean England, when accusations of witchcraft were treated with deadly seriousness.
No confirmed portrait of this specific Alexander Roberts was found in the sources I checked, so a reliable author image may not survive.