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Witch trials and witch related accusations were at a high during the early modern period in Britain, a time that spanned from the beginning of the 16th century to the end of the 18th century. Prior to the 16th century, Witchcraft-- i.e. any magical or supernatural practices made by mankind -- was often seen as a healing art, performed by people ...
Witch trials were most frequent in England in the first half of the 17th century. They reached their most intense phase during the English Civil War of the 1640s and the Puritan era of the 1650s. This was a period of intense witch hunts, known for witch hunters such as Matthew Hopkins .
Religious tensions in England during the 16th and 17th centuries resulted in the introduction of serious penalties for witchcraft. Henry VIII's Witchcraft Act 1541 [1] (33 Hen. 8. c. 8) was the first to define witchcraft as a felony, a crime punishable by death and the forfeiture of goods and chattels. [2] It was forbidden to:
The Witches of Warboys were Alice Samuel and her family, who were accused of and executed for witchcraft between 1589 and 1593 in the village of Warboys, in the Fens of England. [1] It was one of many witch trials in the early modern period, but scholar Barbara Rosen claims it "attracted probably more notice than any other in the sixteenth ...
The 16th-century English Reformation, during which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the pope and the Catholic Church, split the Southworth family of Samlesbury Hall. Sir John Southworth, head of the family, was a leading recusant who had been arrested several times for refusing to abandon his Catholic faith.
Frontispiece from Matthew Hopkins's The Discovery of Witches (1647), showing witches identifying their familiar spirits. Following the Lancaster Witch Trials (1612–1634), William Harvey, physician to King Charles I of England, had been ordered to examine the four women accused, [29] and from this there came a requirement to have material proof of being a witch. [30]
In Wales, witchcraft trials heightened in the 16th and 17th centuries, after the fear of it was imported from England. [86] There was a growing alarm of women's magic as a weapon aimed against the state and church.
Holland was the author of A Treatise against Witchcraft (1590). [3] It was directed from a Calvinist point of view against folk magic and the sceptical arguments of Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot; it also introduced arguments from the writings of Jean Bodin, Lambert Daneau and Niels Hemmingsen.