Witches

Throughout Europe the existence of witches was a long-held orthodox Christian belief. But it took on a more disturbing form from the 16th century. In England witchcraft was not a criminal offence until 1542, late in the reign of Henry VIII. But the law was repealed in 1547. Still, following growing and widespread European continental anti-witch concerns, and based on the biblical authority of Exodus 22.18 “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”, a new statute was passed during the reign of Elizabeth in 1563. Under its terms, people convicted of using “conjurations, enchantments and witchcrafts” should receive the death penalty.

Demonising the 'other' 

As a capital offence, this set a nasty scene. All sorts of behaviour which might have seemed slightly odd or unconventional to people at the time could be conveniently classed as sorcery or witchcraft. This offered a handy way to deal with neighbours you didn’t like, or those maybe seen in various ways as rivals. It clearly attracted the puritan-spawned armies of the self-righteous. Several myths surround the history of witchcraft, so loaded with false information that most of what is believed is untrue. So a straightening out seems sensible. Historian Suzannah Lipscomb has done some fine work in this sphere.

Model of a cunning woman - Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Boscastle

In Britain the period of peak persecution was relatively short. It lasted little over a century, from 1566, with the first trial and execution of a supposed witch, a 63 year old widow named Agnes Waterhouse. Apart from a few notorious cases, like Devon’s Bideford witches of 1682, and the Huntingdon hanging of Mary Hicks and her nine year old daughter Elizabeth in 1725, trials had pretty well died out by the 1670s. This followed the European pattern which saw a general decline in such persecution after the mid-17^th century. With growing concern about the reliability of trial evidence, the death penalty for witches was finally abolished formally in 1736.

Witch burning?

The first record in the British Isles of a witch being burned was of Petronilla de Meath on November 3 1324 at Kilkenny, Ireland. But from then on Ireland neither tried nor burned any more supposed witches. And against common belief, England did not burn witches, preferring hanging instead. Not to be confused with heretics, the only burnings recorded were in Lothian and the Scottish borders where religious faiths were in conflict and many were inclined to see Satan in the other person’s manner of worship. Throughout Britain, though not in all European countries, the Church did not conduct witch hunts or prosecutions. These were left to the secular authorities.

Neither was torture officially used to gain confessions, at least in England. It was sometimes applied in late 16^th century Scotland, (mainly through sleep deprivation) and to an extent during the breakdown of law and order during the Civil War. But in England it was illegal. Usually the weight of neighbours’ accusations was enough to convict a person, typically though not inevitably an old woman, especially if others accused were promised freedom for testifying against her.

Facts and figures

Estimates differ according to the source, but it seems probable that in England only about one in four of those suspected of diabolic dealings were actually put to death. Modern research suggests around 400 people in total were executed in England for witchcraft in the century or so in question. The figure for Europe as a whole, over a longer span of 250 years, was probably more like 50,000. Though high, the number is a small fraction of the millions claimed by some writers.

Plaque commemorating the executions of the Bideford witch trials 

Nor were they all women. While in Britain 80-85% were female, a sizable minority were male. And in many northern European regions, such as Scandinavia and Russia, most of the convicted ‘witches’ were men. This may sit uncomfortably with today’s common assertion that witch persecution was a crime of misogyny by men against women. There’s little evidence either to support the idea that those targeted were ‘healers’ or midwives - especially when the records suggest that among the keenest accusers or witnesses against supposed witches were other women.

Scottish dimension

At the time society’s belief system embraced the supernatural, including the Devil, spirits and so on to explain misfortune, or perhaps just the unknown. While these beliefs were normal throughout Britain, in Scotland the action they provoked was more extreme than in England. We are lucky in having a store of detailed and accurate data, made available via Edinburgh University’s Survey of Scottish Witchcraft. It suggests that in Scotland some 4000 people were accused of witchcraft, much lower than the 30,000 of earlier estimates. Maybe 2000 were put to death. Allowing for different population sizes, this was proportionately perhaps 25 times the rate of England. While many were sentenced to be burned, the universal practice was to strangle the victim at the stake and then burn the body.

North Berwick Witches 'meeting the Devil in a kirkyard'

Scotland saw five periods of intensive ‘witch alarms’, from 1590 to 1662. A panic phase was usually followed by a period of calm. The earliest of these, mainly in the Lothians, was the most severe. Intense episodes were the result of local or regional acts, not a prescribed national blitz. Witches were defined as such by their neighbours, via gossip and quarrelling. Many had lived with their reputation for 20 years or more. If some bodily blemish could be found, or often created by pricking the victim, it could helpfully be characterised as the ‘Devil’s mark’.

Witchfinder General

In England the 1612 Pendle witch trials represented one panic period, though in truth there were not many. The most intense by far was from 1644 to 1646 in Essex and East Anglia, when the Civil War had strained formal civic authority. A certain Matthew Hopkins was responsible for this murderous initiative. Calling himself Witchfinder General (a title not bestowed by Parliament), he had 300 people tried and executed in these two years. These victims alone accounted for a horrific 75% of England’s 100 year total.

Matthew Hopkins in a 19th century edition of 'Discovery of Witches'

Hopkins went from town to town in East Anglia being paid by local groups, whose virtue had evidently been outraged, to clear each place of ‘witchcraft’. Somehow it’s hard to rid yourself entirely of the feeling that given the stoking of widespread populist sentiment, something along similar lines could still happen again. Hopkins retired in 1646 aged 27 and died the following year. Actor Vincent Price said it all in the film Witchfinder General, when, in a chillingly self-righteous voice he intoned, “God’s work, Matthew, God’s work”.