In the mid-1990s the historian James Sharpe, who has died aged 77, wrote Instruments of Darkness, a book on witch-hunting in England that reopened a field of research that had been in the doldrums for a generation after the Welsh historian Keith Thomas’s brilliant Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971). Published in 1996, Jim’s book helped to make the study of British witchcraft what it is today: one of the most lively areas of historical writing.

Earlier historians had argued that whereas witch-hunting on the European continent was fantastical, dominated by beliefs about the devil, English witch-hunting was comparatively rational and down-to-earth, centred on beliefs about the practical harm that witches caused to people and animals. Jim showed that this was nonsense, and that English witch-hunting was also powered by fear of the devil and followed much the same pattern as many other European countries.

An archival hound, Jim surveyed every possible paper-trail in the course of his research, uncovering valuable sources for those who have come after him, including via his copious footnotes and bibliographies. In addition, he went to many conferences on the continent and made it his business to meet the leading scholars of crime and witchcraft, always developing the European dimension of his work.

He loved the detail – he was fascinated, for instance, by the phenomenon of familiars in English witchcraft, creatures who suckled on witches and carried out their bidding, one of the few features that do indeed set English witch-beliefs apart from the continent. He noted them all: Bid the ferret, a lamb, another creature that was carefully kept in a basket with wool, and a white-spotted cat ominously named Sathan.

Perhaps his most appealing book is his history of Anne Gunter, published in 2000, about a 17th-century girl who claimed to be possessed but was unmasked as a fraud. It is a classic of its kind, a marvellous micro-study that reveals the inner world of an unhappy individual who found herself used for other people’s agendas and who, Jim argued, just wanted love and attention. The book, The Bewitching of Anne Gunter, explores the mindsets of the doctors, ministers of religion and even the monarch himself, James I, who did not believe Anne’s stories.

As Jim was well aware, at another level it is also a story about fathers – and patriarchal figures of all kinds – who fail their children. It is a gripping read, with lots of humour, and along the way speculates on the origins of football. In the style of a 17th-century broadside Jim gave the book the wonderful sub-title, A Horrible and True Story of Football, Witchcraft, Murder and the King of England – wording that led the Bavarian State Library in Munich to refuse twice to buy it, on the grounds that it simply could not be an academic book.

Jim followed up with Dick Turpin: the Myth of the English Highwayman (2004), another fantastic read, and then A Fiery and Furious People: a History of Violence in England (2016), which upturned the idea of the peaceable phlegmatic English character.

This was a return to earlier preoccupations, for Jim started out as a historian of crime. From 1983 on he wrote a series of path-breaking books on the history of crime in the British Isles in the 16th and 17th centuries, inspiring others to follow in his wake.

In a field dominated by Tudor and Stuart monarchs and their courts, Jim brought ordinary people into history, in all their variety, by showing just what could be done with court records of crime. These rich sources have revolutionised how we write history because they take us as close as we can to the voices of the lower classes in the past, and Jim was one of the first to realise this.

Jim was born in Lewisham, south-east London, to James, a labourer, and Margaret, a cleaner. At Colfe’s school, in Blackheath, he won a place at Oxford University, where he did a history degree and then a doctorate under Thomas’s supervision. He spent all his career, from 1973, as a history lecturer at the University of York, where he was a marvellous and generous teacher and rose to be professor before retirement in 2016.

York became the go-to place for social history, with the three Jims, Jim Walvin, Jim McMillan and Jim Sharpe, all doing exciting new work on slavery, women’s history and crime respectively. He adored teaching and had a wonderful line in dry humour; his students all knew how proud he was of them.

He is survived by his wife, Krista (nee Cowman), whom he married in 1993, and their children, Guy and Freddie.

• James Anthony Sharpe, historian, born 9 October 1946; died 13 February 2024