The Devil in Disguise illuminates the impact of the two British revolutions of the seventeenth century & the shifts in religious political scientific literary economic social & moral culture that they brought about. It does so through the fascinating story of one family & their locality: the Cowpers of Hertford. Their dramatic history contains a murder mystery bigamy a scandal novel & a tyrannized wife all set against a backdrop of violently competing local factions rampant religious prejudice & the last conviction of a witch in Engl&. Spencer Cowper was accused of murdering a Quaker & his brother William had two illegitimate children by his second wife. Their scandalous lives became the source of public gossip much to the horror of their mother Sarah who poured out her heart in a diary that also chronicles her feeling of being enslaved to her husb&. Her two sons remained in the limelight. Both were instrumental in the prosecution of Henry Sacheverell a firebrand cleric who preached a sermon about the illegitimacy of resistance & religious toleration. His parliamentary trial in 1710 provoked serious riots in London. William Cowper also intervened in 1712 to secure the life of Jane Wenham whose trial provoked a wide-ranging debate about witchcraft beliefs. The Cowpers & their town are a microcosm of a changing world. Their story suggests that an early Enlightenment far from being simply a movement of ideas sparked by great thinkers was shaped & advanced by local & personal struggles.