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The early modern context: a case study of early modern Britain
This chapter explains how early modern British people dealt with witchcraft, in theory and practice. It looks at English and Scottish writings on witchcraft (demonologies, treatises), at the court process and its documents, and at specific laws and trials in both countries.
Witchcraft in theory
As we saw in the Introduction, the question of what constituted witchcraft â and therefore who and what a witch was â was a pressing one for early modern people. There were many answers, but one of the most concise was given by a nonconformist minister working in the parish of Maldon in Essex, England, in the late 1580s.
What is a witch? George Gifford, an English demonologist
The minister, George Gifford, had taken trouble to refine his definition, and this is what he said:
A Witch is one that woorketh by the Devill, or by some devilish or curious art, either hurting or healing, revealing thinges secrete, or foretelling thinges to come, which the devil hath devised to entangle and snare mens soules withal unto damnation. The conjurer, the enchaunter, the sorcerer, the deviner, and whatsoever other sort there is, are in deede compassed within this circle.
(Gifford, A Discourse of the Subtill Practises of Devilles by Witches and Sorcerers, 1587, B2âB2 is the âsignatureâ number, like a modern page number)
Giffordâs definition seems like a comprehensive one. It tells us many of the things that witches do, such as accessing hidden knowledge and making prophecies, hurting people and things or â rather confusingly â healing them. It explains how the witch works with reference to the source of a witchâs power: the devil. And it offers a theory about why the world is troubled with witches in the first place: the devil has devised witchcraft as a means to confuse and delude human beings so that their souls come into danger of being damned. Witches, Gifford suggests, come in multiple kinds. They can be conjurors, those who raise demons. They can be enchanters or sorcerers, words that come from French roots and mean people who cast spells by chanting or singing, and those who are sorcieres or sorciers, female or male witches. They can be diviners, who foretell the future by reading signs. The source of the power of each witch, however, is always the same: the devil.
But although Giffordâs definition has a nice comprehensive feel to it, it also leaves some questions worryingly open. A witch works âbyâ the devil â yes, but how? Does the devil grant some of his preternatural powers to the witch, so that he or she can cause boils or death, lame a horse or spoil a crop with weeds? How would Satan do that? Or does that little word âbyâ conceal some doubts about the nature and reality of the power that hovers somewhere between devil and witch? English witches were notorious for having animal âfamiliarsâ, creatures thought to be devils in the form of cats, dogs, rats, ferrets and so on. How did these fit into wider theories? There is also another clause to Giffordâs first sentence telling us that witches may also work âby some devilish or curious artâ. What does that mean exactly? That some witches might not be directly working by, or with, the devil and his power? That they might have access to some âartâ that whilst it might be devilish might also be âcuriousâ, a word which had connotations of sin and danger in early modern England? How, too, does healing people constitute witchcraft? Surely healing is a good thing? And finally, how does practising witchcraft snare the souls of witches and perhaps also other people? Why is witchcraft such an important part of the devilâs plan to damn human beings?
The asking of these questions was central to Giffordâs attempt to explain witchcraft to his fellow Elizabethans, as he demonstrated six years later when he published another book on the subject. This one answered some of the questions left open by his earlier statement. It was titled A Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcraftes (London, 1593). The âdialogueâ Gifford created was in fact a conversation between three main protagonists, with interjections from two others. The three main speakers were Daniel, a godly and learned man, Samuel, a well-meaning but ignorant man, and Master B., a well-read but misguided schoolteacher. Samuel is accompanied by his wife, who is even more ignorant than he, and her friend Goodwife R., whose opinions are apparently meant to be rejected on the grounds of their sex as well as their folly. But the reader is expected to take good counsel from conversations between Daniel, Samuel and Master B., like this one:
Master B. I heard you say, if I did not mistake your speech, that there be witches that worke by the divell, But yet I pray you tel me, do you thinke there be such? I know some are of opinion there be none.
Daniel. It is so evident by the Scriptures, and in all experience, that there be witches which worke by the divell, or rather, I may say, the divell worketh by them, that such as go about to prove the contrarie do show themselves but cavillers [quibblers].
Master B. I am glad we agree in that point, I hope we shall in the rest. What say you to this? that the witches have their spirits, some hath one, some hath more ⌠some in one likenesse, and some in another, as like cats, weasils, toades, or mice, whom they nourish with milke or with a chicken, or by letting them suck now and then a drop of bloud; whom they call when they be offended with any, and send them to hurt them in their bodies, yea, to kill them, and to kill their cattell?
Daniel. Here is great deceit, and great illusion.
(Gifford, A Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcraftes, 1593, CvâC2)
Daniel agrees with Giffordâs main point as set out in his 1587 definition, but when he is presented with Master B.âs detailed understanding of how the devil works âbyâ witches, he says it is wrong. He goes on to explain that the spirits are not independent creatures, but simply forms of the devil, hiding Satanâs might and power in the shape of small, inoffensive animals. They donât need nourishment, and they are not âsentâ by witches â instead they are the ones in charge of events. Far from being powerful over the devil in his little animal costumes, the witch is in fact his slave.
Daniel goes on to explain how this is so. The witch thinks she sends her spirits to wreak revenge on people who have wronged her, picking her victims and their punishments like an angry queen. But this is a demonic lie:
The witch is the vassal of the divell, and not he her servant; he is lord and commaundeth, and she is his drudge and obeyeth ⌠You say the witch commeth home angrie [after quarrelling with a neighbour]; who hath kindled this wrath in heart but the divell? ⌠He would and doth perswade the blind [ignorant] people that he medleth little, but [only] when he is even [explicitly] hired and sent, and that then his medling is but in such matters: and hereupon all is on a broyle against old women, which can any ways be suspected to be witches, as if they were the very plagues of the world, and as if all would be well, and safe from such harmes, if they were rooted out.
(C7)
The devil (not the witch) chooses the victims, Daniel explains: first he makes the witch angry with someone he already has in mind to harm, or someone who is already ill, and then the witch thinks she has effectively cursed that person when they fall ill or die. The devil tells her he only acts when she âhiresâ and âsendsâ him, and pretends he has no power to meddle beyond âsuch mattersâ. And, worse, the witchâs neighbours also think this is the case, and so in a sizzle of anger and suspicion they hunt out the supposed witch and have her hanged, while the devil, who has actually caused all the harm, struts away laughing. All this is part of Satanâs plan, Daniel tells Master B.
There is even another stage of the demonic mischief. The devil persuades the witchâs enemies that their afflictions are not natural and so they go to other, supposedly âgoodâ, witches (diviners and healers, often called âcunningâ or âknowingâ people) to see if they can get the spell upon them lifted. This means that the afflicted people, too, are complicit in acts of witchcraft, because the anti-witchcraft remedies are not godly. Instead, they are devised by Satan as another form of witchcraft, since he also controls the healers. Their remedies are not natural, but evilly magical. And they often point the finger at people suspected of bewitching their clients, suggesting that âMother So-and-so is the person bewitching you, you must take action against herâ. Following the instructions of the cunning person, the bewitched client might then abuse or attack the alleged witch. They might even complain against her to the magistrate and finally have her hanged â and all without a second thought about their own sins in consulting cunning people, or about why God might have allowed them to be afflicted in the first place.
A godly Christian who is experiencing some pain or misfortune, Daniel argues, would sit down and reflect on whether or not he had been sinful himself before accusing a random old woman of bewitching him. He might go to his minister for advice if he was unsure of what to think. And he should ask himself some hard questions. Has he been charitable to his neighbours? Has he lied or cheated or doubted God? Instead of viciously pursuing a witch to the gallows, he should think about how the devil might be distracting him from true insight. And the witch, too, should reflect. Was her power real, or was Satan lying to her about it? Who was more likely to be in charge, Gifford wants us to decide â an ignorant old lady, illiterate, obscure and poor, or Godâs oldest enemy, the super-cunning prince of darkness? Giffordâs argument is gendered in these terms, but it makes both men and women guilty of using witchcraft, in different ways: both are Satanâs puppets.
Once you see the detail of Giffordâs argument, you start to see why no definition of witchcraft â neither the one set out in my Introduction nor the one put forward by Gifford himself at the start of Chapter One â is quite as clear as it first appears. The witch, it turns out, isnât really thought to be a witch at all in the expected sense â instead she is only a confused, though malicious, dupe of Satan. Witchcraft is not really power, but weakness. Witches do not really hurt people, reveal things secret or foretell the future, because the witch does not in fact work by the devil: rather, the devil works by or through the witch, not needing her at all to perform whatever evil he likes. He could do it anyway, but it suits him to implicate her in his schemes. And all kinds of people who claim magical ability, such as diviners, fortune tellers and magical healers are, in some peopleâs opinion, just as much witches as an old woman who thinks she can kill cattle with a few well-chosen spells. These too are Satanâs dupes, as are their clients. Gifford is keen to show that people using other definitions of witchcraft are just plain wrong (on Gifford and his demonology, see Macfarlane 1977; McGinnis).
The fact is that once you get down to the detail there are multiple Medieval and early modern definitions of witchcraft within the overall framework laid out in my Introduction. Witchcraft was a very complex matter. There were certainly common factors in most demonological accounts of witches across Europe and America: the nature of harm ascribed to witchcraft, from death to mild misfortune; the possibility that witches would claim the power to heal or prophesy as well as/instead of harm; the probability that the witch would conform to a certain stereotype of gender, age, social status and so on; and the involvement of the devil, which meant that illusion and mistake could easily creep into any definition and any attempt to address the problem. All these can be seen in Giffordâs English demonology of the 1580sâ90s, although if you read the Introduction youâll notice that he is not at all interested in the idea of the sabbath, the group meeting of witches much discussed by German and French demonologists. Perhaps this seemed to be too Catholic (and possibly too sexual) for English Protestants: it seemed too much like a Catholic Mass for them to be sure it was not just a delusion of Inquisitors. Giffordâs fellow English demonologist Reginald Scot certainly thought so. But beyond the specifics of Giffordâs understanding of witches, we find ourselves in a situation of dialogue, just as Gifford did, and as I discussed in the Introduction.
What is a witch? James VI and I, a Scottish (and then a British) demonologist
As I said there, King James VI of Scotland and I of England also found himself resorting to dialogue, when in the 1590s he sought to define Scottish witchcraft. Itâs time to look at Jamesâ arguments in detail, to compare them with Giffordâs. Even countries whose politics, language and religion were as interwoven as Englandâs and Scotlandâs were had divergent understandings of what witchcraft was and what witches did.
One of the first differences the reader notices is Jamesâ conviction that witches are a very serious threat to society, and â unlike Gifford â he thinks they attend sabbaths as a way of expressing this threat. Gifford is concerned about the existence of witches, but most of his Dialogue is about rebutting false beliefs and casual accusations. He maximises the role of the devil in doing harm, and minimises the role of the witch, who is a solitary and rather impotent figure. He believes even good Christians may foolishly engage in witchcraft activities â for example, by consulting âgoodâ witches â but he has no interest in starting a witch-hunt against these or even more guilty persons. In contrast, whilst James agrees with Gifford that the devil deceives witches about the nature of their power, he is convinced that many of the activities of witches are quite real, and deadly. Witches are a distinct community of people who have signed up to a contract with the devil and been marked physically by him on their bodies so they can be identified. They must be hunted and killed, for they threaten the very fabric of the nation. In particular, James argues that mass meetings of witches take place, and that a heretical anti-Christian form of worship motivates and facilitates witchcraft at these sabbaths. For James, witches are not isolated victims of delusion, but potent members of a conspiratorial secret society, a church of Satan.
Here is James on the witchesâ sabbath, the same one imagined by demonologists like de Lancre and Boguet (see my Introduction for their views of this Satanic church):
As the servants of GOD, publicklie uses to convene for serving of him, so makes he [Satan] them [witches] in great numbers to convene (though publickly they dare not) for his service. As none convenes to the adoration and worshipping of God, except they be marked with his seale, the Sacrament of Baptisme: So none serves Sathan, and convenes to the adoring of him, that are not marked with [a] marke ⌠As the Minister sent by God, teacheth plainely at the time of their publick conventions, how to serve him in spirit and truth: so that uncleane spirite, in his owne person teacheth his Disciples, at the time of their convening, how to worke all kinde of mischief âŚ
(King James, Daemonologie, 1597, Book 2, Chapter 3)
And so on. Note that James starts by describing Christian practice, and then explains how the devil copies it. For James, witchcraft was an inversion of Christianity, and the devil was âGodâs Apeâ, an imitator of godly practice just as a monkey might imitate a man (on which see also Clark, âInversionâ; Normand and Roberts). This was a notion that â as we shall see in the next section â he had heard described in actual testimony from a Satanic church convention in 1591. And in the dialogue his character Epistemon says of the sabbath that âI not onelie take it to be true in their opinions, but even so to be indeedeâ â in other words, the witches are not deluded, but really do attend such conventions. His disputant Philomathes counters that surely some aspects of the sabbath meeting are attributable to delusion â for instance, people who say they went there in animal shape must have been dreaming. James leaves the discussion open, indicating once again how useful the dialogic form was to demonologists, since it was hard to know the truth about witchcraft, but there is no ambiguity about his central message. Witches are terrifyingly dangerous.
Jamesâ version of the witch is thus quite unlike Giffordâs in many ways. He tells us that witches chop up corpses for use in magic and poison people, they can cause love or hate, cause or transfer sickness, kill people by melting wax images of them, send demons into their bodies, drive people mad, and cause bad weather and sea storms. They are mostly women, motivated by greed or vengeance. The only way to combat them is to arrest and imprison them, because âif ⌠their apprehending and detention be by the lawfull Magistrate ⌠their power is then no greater than before that ever they medled with their masterâ, the devil (Book 2, Chapter 6). James explains painstakingly that only the âlawfullâ official can challenge the power of witches. This official holds the divine power of God in his hands, whilst others â pretenders, private citizens â do not. As we shall see in the next section, James had special cause to believe that only a divinely appointed official could root out witches: the ultimate divine official was the King, James himself. And when he became King of England as well as of Scotland, in 1603, a new Witchcraft Act was soon afterwards introduced which targeted some of the aspects of witchcraft discussed in Daemonologie. Daemonologie was also republished in London. Even so, the new provisions against witchcraft had little impact in the English courts â as we have seen, not everyone agreed with Jamesâ demonological theories (on the 1604 Witchcraft Act see Newton and Bath, eds.).
It can be seen from the comparison of one representative English and one representative Scottish demonologist (whose views influenced Britain more widely) that whilst there were shared opinions about witches across the British Isles, there could also be sharp differences between demonologists writing in different local cultures. In this instance, differences are most readily explained by religious and political circumstances: England experienced its Reformation earlier than Scotland, and the outcome was different in that puritanical Calvinists came to power in Scotland whilst in England a more Catholic-leaning Anglicanism triumphed. In a strongly evangelical, sectarian culture such as that of Scotland, it was easier to imagine witches as anti-Christian because ministers and magistrates were used to looking out for enemies of God (or their version of God). Where religious culture was more moderate, fur...
