A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718Notestein, Wallace
History
A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718
Notestein, Wallace
Witchcraft -- England -- History
These are illustrations of the point that the _Dæmonologie_ and the
statute of James I find their commentary in the evidence offered at the
trials. It goes without saying that these illustrations represent only a
few of the forms of testimony given in the courts. It may not,
therefore, be amiss to run over some other specimens of the proof that
characterized the witch trials of the reign. With most of them we are
already familiar. The requirement that the witch should repeat certain
words after the justice of the peace was used once in the reign of
James. It was an unusual method at best.[24] A commoner form of proof
was that adduced from the finding or seeing clay or waxen images in the
possession of the accused.[25] The witness who had found such a model on
the premises of the defendant or had seen the defendant handling it,
jumped readily to the conclusion that the image represented some
individual. If it should be asked how we are to account for this sort of
evidence, the answer is an easy one. Every now and then in the annals of
witchcraft it came out that a would-be accuser had hidden a waxen or
clay figure in the house of the person he wished to accuse and had then
found it. No doubt some cases started in this way. No doubt, too, bitter
women with grudges to satisfy did experiment with images and were caught
at it. But this was rare. In the greater number of cases the stories of
images were pure fabrications. To that category belong almost certainly
the tales told at Lancaster.[26]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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