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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 ...
In the 16th and 17th centuries people across England, irrespective of status, believed in witches. Witchcraft was first made a capital offence in 1542 under a statute of Henry VIII but was repealed five years later. Witch fever reached new heights when witchcraft was again classed as a felony in 1562 under a statute of Elizabeth I.
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 ...
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.
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.
The sex of witches in outbreak witchcraft cases in New England from 1620 to 1725 recorded a whopping 156 accused females, with only 49 males in the list. [7] In New England alone, at least 344 people were accused of witchcraft between the same years listed above in total, making seventy-eight percent of that group women who had been accused of ...
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]