witchcraft

witchcraft. Belief in witchcraft, the capacity to do evil or good through occult means, has been present in most human societies. Scattered references to witchcraft practices survive from all parts of the British Isles from an early date, and become more numerous when medieval sources are considered.

It was, however, the 16th cent. which saw important changes in both England and Scotland. Educated opinion in both countries was affected by a new demonological theory which reinvented the witch as a member of a conspiracy against Christendom. For the populace, conversely, witchcraft meant either maleficium, the doing of harm by witchcraft, or seeking medical advice or other services from the ‘good’ witch, most often referred to in England as a cunning man or woman. The new demonological thinking allowed a harder official line against witches. An English Act of 1542 had been repealed, but 1563 saw the passing of legislation against witchcraft in both England and Scotland.

Loss of most relevant trial records makes the English situation immediately after 1563 unclear. In the south-east (notably in Essex), trials and executions for witchcraft rose steadily, peaking in the late Elizabethan period, and were declining by the 1630s. In other areas the peak came in the Interregnum. Most English prosecutions were brought against individual witches, the only large-scale panic coming in East Anglia in 1645–7. This was associated with the ‘Witch-Finder General’, Matthew Hopkins, and involved accusations against 250 witches, of whom perhaps 100 were executed. Trials declined after the Restoration, with the last known execution for witchcraft coming in Devon in 1685, and the last trial in 1712. It seems unlikely that more than 500 people were executed for witchcraft in England. Many others, most of them cunning folk, were tried but suffered lesser penalties.

In Scotland, a different pattern emerged. There were few trials before 1591, but in that year mass prosecutions, followed by numerous executions, occurred. Accusations revolved around an alleged satanic plot against James VI, and the experience moved him to write a tract against witches, the Daemonologie. Other mass persecutions came in 1597, 1629, 1649, and most ferociously in 1661–2. Although peasant concerns over maleficium remained important, the most consistent influence behind the mass trials was the aggressive Calvinism of the Scottish kirk. Accusations were concentrated in the Lowlands, where the kirk's Christianizing campaign was most intense. Witchcraft beliefs doubtlessly flourished in the Highlands, but the encouragement to prosecute witches was lacking there. Moreover, the Scottish legal system, unlike the English, permitted the torturing of suspects in criminal investigations. Overall, perhaps 1,000 people were executed for witchcraft in Scotland.

The statutes against witches in both countries were repealed in 1736. Over the second half of the 17th cent. scepticism among the educated, never entirely absent, had become stronger. The reasons for this are not entirely clear. The notion that it was somehow related to new scientific ideas is unconvincing when subjected to close scrutiny. A more useful clue lies in the scepticism which leading judges in both Scotland and England showed when trying witches. The difficulty of proving witchcraft provoked a more general questioning, while there was also a powerful cultural shift. Many educated people, while unable to deny the theoretical possibility of witchcraft, felt uncomfortable with what they increasingly regarded as something symptomatic not of a satanic sect, but of popular superstitions.

Belief in witchcraft was retained among the populace at large, and when folklorists began to collect materials in the 19th cent. they found witchcraft beliefs flourishing everywhere from Cornwall to the Scottish Highlands. By the 20th cent., better communications, mass schooling, and the decline of those ‘face-to-face’ communities where witchcraft suspicions operated eroded such beliefs. At the same time, interest in the occult was renewed among educated urban dwellers, and there are currently many people who consider themselves to be witches, and as such to be adherents to a pre-Christian religion. They have little historical basis for such opinions.

J. A. Sharpe