Think of witches, and you often conjure up a mental picture of Shakespeare’s three old crones crouched around a bubbling cauldron, chanting incantations. But now and again, men were accused of witchcraft and executed too.
An episode in Macbeth by William Shakespeare: the three witches. Mezzotint by J.R. Smith, 1785, after H. Fuseli, 1783.
Malicious
Quite often, those accused of witchcraft simply practised herbal remedies or offered wise advice. But in medieval times, witchcraft was associated with the devil and his devotees. Sometimes accusations were simply levelled out of malice. Misinformation and superstitions also played their part.
Heresy
Witchcraft had been deemed heresy and denounced as such by Pope Innocent V111 in 1484. However, Henry VIII’s Act of 1542 was the first to define witchcraft as a felony – a crime punishable by death and the forfeiture of goods and chattels. This law was repealed five years later. The laws were restored in 1562/3 by Queen Elizabeth I, although hers were less harsh in that death was only supposed to be given where harm had been committed.
Punishments
In Western Europe, somewhere in the region of 200,000 so-called witches were either tortured, burnt at the stake, drowned, or hanged.
There were definitive differences in the way witches were viewed in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. For the most part, in England, witchcraft accusations revolved around spite, hatred, greed, and envy of neighbours. If a woman acted differently, looked different, or had a deformity, it could trigger an accusation. English law reflected this in that very few witches were burned; most were hanged as felons.
Scotland
Scotland followed the continent; the notion of witchcraft was predominantly guided by religious beliefs. Witches, it was said, had thrown in their lot with the devil, and so were beyond redemption and would burn in hell. Therefore they were often stripped, covered in tar, and then burnt at the stake. Scotland was the most dangerous place for witches across the whole of Europe. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 3,141 witches were executed at the stake, five times that of any other European country.
Ireland and Wales
Ireland was a mixture of the two; if knowledge and skill exceeded the norm, then they could be considered witches. But not always; rather, they were referred to as wise women or fairy doctors and were regarded as an integral part of the community.
Wales also had relatively few witch trials and fewer executions, even at the peak of the witch furore across Europe. This is possibly due to the Celtic language being spoken and the influence of its culture.
Repealed
Parliament repealed previous laws in 1736 but still allowed fines or imprisonment on anyone who claimed to be able to use magic. Under the Vagrancy Act of 1824, fortune-telling, astrology and spiritualism became punishable offences. Finally, the 1736 Act was repealed in 1951 and replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act.
