early every chief English witch trials were performed under this law - the Lancashire
group trials of 1612 and 1633, where the majority of the indicted were exonerated -
and the Leicester trials of 1616, where nine were hanged. The act continued in intensity
for the period of the Civil War and the Commonwealth (1642 to 1660) and was the source
of the accusations at the infamous trials in 1645 all over the eastern counties
(Cheirnsford, Norfolk, Bury St. Edmunds, Great Yarmouth) and in 1649 at Huntingdon,
Berwick, and Newcastle.
This proposition of James I revoked the comparable and related act of 1563 under
Queen Elizabeth (while preserving a large amount of the wording) and used instead even
harsher laws. It made hanging mandatory for the first offense for maleficia even where
the bewitched person did not die; under the Elizabethan law the penalty was a year's
imprisonment. Nonetheless, for divination of stolen property, making love philters, or
harming property, the penalty remained, for a first transgression, one year's imprisonment
and time in the pillory. The edict attempted to indicate a pact with the Devil, making it a
felony (resulting in the death penalty) to "exercise any invocation or conjuration of any
evil and wicked spirit, or [to] consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward
any evil and wicked spirit to or for any intent or purpose."
Witchcraft was not simply the rude intolerance of an uneducated populace; this bill was
supported by some of the ablest and a good number of learned men in England, including the
Earl of Northumberland, the Bishop of Lincoln, the Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas,
the Attorney General, the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and the Chief Justice of the King's
Bench.
Sir Robert Filmer, a famous lawyer of the time, writing fifty years later in his Advertisement to
the Jurymen of England Touching Witches (London, 1653), scoffed at the complexity of defining
witchcraft, or make a distinction (as the act tried to) between witchcraft, conjuring, and
sorcery. "This statute presupposeth that every one knows what a conjurer, a witch, an
enchanter, a charmer, and sorcerer is, as being to be learned best of divines, [although]
they have not described or distinguished between them." Then Filmer adds, to show the
impracticality of acquiring a guilty verdict under this statute, "And yet the law is very just
in requiring a due and lawful conviction." Sir Robert observed that intent to kill was by and
large essential to obtain a sentence:
"Although the statute runs in the disjunctive or, and so makes every single crime capital, yet the judges usually by a favorable interpretation take the disjunctive or for the copulative and, and therefore ordinarily they condemn none for witches unless they be charged with the murdering of some person."
In spite of this, the jail records show that at Cheirnsford in 1645 seven women were hanged
for the singular indictment of engaging evil spirits. George Lyman Kittredge, author of Witchcraft
in Old and New England (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), adds: "No case has ever been cited in which a
man or woman was put to death for this offense alone [digging up the dead. a new clause], and
we may therefore disregard that clause as of no practical effect."
The majority of the Salem witch trials were indictments under this statute, the later
prosecutions citing it by name. On December 14, 1692, the Massachusetts General Council to a
large extent endorsed the 1604 bill to give "more particular direction in the execution of the
law against witchcraft." It remained law until 1695. The act of 1604 was revoked under
George II in England in 1736.
AN ACT AGAINST CONJURATION, WITCHCRAFT, AND DEALING WITH EVIL AND WICKED SPIRITS.
- Be it enacted by the King, our sovereign lord, the Lords spiritual and temporal, and the Commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that the statute made in the fifth year of the reign of our late sovereign Lady of most famous and happy memory. Queen Elizabeth intituled "An Act against conjurations, enchantments, and witchcrafts," be from the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel next coming, for and concerning all offenses to be committed after the same feast, utterly repealed.
- And for the better restraining the said offenses, and more severe punishing the same, be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that if any person or persons, after the said Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel next coming, [a] shall use, practice, or exercise any invocation, or conjuration, of any evil and wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil and wicked spirit to or for any intent or purpose; or [b] take up any dead man, woman, or child out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resteth, or the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; or [c] shall use, practice, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof; that then every such offender or offenders, their aiders, abettors, and counselors, being of any the said offenses duly and lawfully convicted and attainted, shall suffer pains of death as a felon or felons, and shall lose the privilege and benefit of clergy and sanctuary.
- And further, to the intent that all manner of practice, use, or exercise of witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery should be from henceforth utterly avoided, abolished, and taken away, be it enacted by the authority of this present Parliament, that if any person or persons shall, from and after the said Feast of St. Michael the Archangel next coming, take upon him or them by witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, [a] to tell or declare in what place any treasure of gold or silver should or might be found or had in the earth or other secret places, or where goods or things lost or stolen should be found or become; or [b] to the intent to provoke any person to unlawful love; or [c] whereby any chattel or goods of any person shall be destroyed, wasted, or impaired; or [d] to hurt or destroy any person in his or her body, although the same be not effected and done; that then all and every such person and persons so offending, and being thereof lawfully convicted, shall for the said offense suffer imprisonment by the space of one whole year, without bail or mainprize [surety], and once in every quarter of the said year shall in some market town, upon the market day or at such time as any fair shall be kept there, stand openly upon the pillory by the space of six hours, and there shall openly confess his or her error and offense.
- IV. And if any person or persons being once convicted of the same offenses as is aforesaid eftsoons perpetrate and commit the like offense, that then every such offender, being of any the said offenses the second time lawfully and duly convicted and attainted as is aforesaid, shall suffer pains of death as a felon or felons, and shall lose the benefit and privilege of clergy and sanctuary. Saving to the wife of such person as shall offend in anything contrary to this act her title of dower; and also to the heir and successor of every such person his or their titles of inheritance, succession, and other rights, as though no such attainder of the ancestor or predecessor had been made.
- V. Provided always that if the offender in any of the cases aforesaid shall happen to be a peer of this realm, then his trial therein to be had by his peers, as is used in cases of felony or treason, and not otherwise.
References and Notes:
- Statutes of the Realm (London 1817; repr. The Statutes, 3rd ed., London, 1950).