Witches

Most men and women knew nothing of science. To them, the world was full of spirits and witches. Witches (nearly always women) were supposed to have sold their souls to the devil. In return, he had given them magic powers. They could cast spells and give people the 'evil eye'. If they did so, their victims would be taken ill, or die, or be hit by bad luck.

Witches, so they said, lived alone, apart from a spirit that helped them in their work. This often took the form of a pet, such as a cat. So village people kept clear of old women who lived alone with their cats. They hung horse-shoes and bunches of herbs over their own cottage doors to protect them from the witches' powers.

Not only the ignorant and poor believed in witches. In 1542, the gentry, merchants, and lords in Parliament made witchcraft a crime. The law stayed in force until 1736. In that time, a few hundred women, most of them old, were hanged. (Witches were not burned in England.)

A simple chain of events could bring a 'witch' to trial. An old woman would come begging at a farmhouse door. The busy farmer's wife would send her off with nothing. Shortly after, the farmer would fall ill and die. His wife would remember the old woman, and accuse her of being a witch. The old woman would be arrested and tortured. Under torture, she would 'confess' that she was a witch.

In the late seventeenth century, educated people stopped believing in witches. Poor old women were still brought to court, but judges refused to find them guilty. The last hanging for witchcraft in England took place at Exeter in 1685. The common folk, of course, went on believing in witches many years after witchcraft ceased to be a crime.

Walter Robson: Crown, Parliament and People; Oxford University Press, 1992/2002, page 88