A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718

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 wit...

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 number...

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 tw...

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 controv...

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...

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 witho...

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...

reads the preamble, "dyvers and sundrie persones unlawfully have devised and practised Invocacions and conjuracions of Sprites, pretendyng by suche meanes to understande and get...

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 pro...

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 discoveri...

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 a...

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 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...

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...

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...

Justice.-- Come, come: firing her thatch? ridiculous! Take heed, sirs, what you do; unless your proofs Come better aimed, instead of turning her Into a witch, you'll prove yours...