1558. John Thirkle, "taylour, detected of conjuringe," to be examined. Acts of Privy Council, n. s., VII, 6. ---- Several persons in London charged with conjuration to be sent to t...
A.--PAMPHLET LITERATURE. Sec. 1.--Witchcraft under Elizabeth (see ch. II). A large part of the evidence for the trials of Elizabeth's reign is derived from the pamphlets issued soo...
From the chronicling of witch trials we turn aside in this chapter to follow the career of the first great English opponent of the superstition. We have seen how the attack upon th...
In the annals of English witchcraft Matthew Hopkins occupies a place by himself. For more than two years he was the arch-instigator in prosecutions which, at least in the numbers o...
The year 1566 is hardly less interesting in the history of English witchcraft than 1563. It has been seen that the new statute passed in 1563 was the beginning of a vigorous prosec...
It is possible to sift, to analyze, and to reconstruct the material derived from witch trials until some few conclusions about a given period can be ventured. A large proportion of...
No small part of our story has been devoted to the writings of Scot, Gifford, Harsnett, and King James. It is impossible to understand the significance of the prosecutions without...
It has been said by a thoughtful writer that the subject of witchcraft has hardly received that place which it deserves in the history of opinions. There has been, of course, a rea...
In his attitude towards superstition, Charles I resembled the later rather than the earlier James I. No reign up to the Revolution was marked by so few executions. It was a time of...
No period of English history saw a wider interest in both the theory and the practice of witchcraft than the years that followed the Restoration. Throughout the course of the twent...
We have, in the last chapter, traced the history of witchcraft in England through the Hopkins episode of 1645-1647. From the trials at Ely in the autumn of 1647 to the discoveries...
In the history of witchcraft the years from 1688 to 1718 may be grouped together as comprising a period. This is not to say that the year of the Revolution marked any transition in...
In the narrative of English witchcraft the story of the exorcists is a side-issue. Yet their performances were so closely connected with the operations of the Devil and of his agen...
Some one has remarked that witchcraft came into England with the Stuarts and went out with them. This offhand way of fixing the rise and fall of a movement has just enough truth ab...
In the last chapter we mentioned the controversy over Jane Wenham. In attempting in this chapter to show the currents and cross-currents of opinion during the last period of witch...
In an earlier chapter we followed the progress of opinion from James I to the Restoration. We saw that in the course of little more than a half-century the centre of the controvers...
1.--Charged with Causing Death. 1603. Yorkshire. Mary Pannel. 1606. Hertford. Johanna Harrison and her daughter. 1612. Northampton. Helen Jenkinson, Arthur Bill, Mary Barber. 1612....