Devil; Witchcraft -- Great Britain; Witchcraft -- United States
‘One that shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation, or conjuration
of any evill or wicked spirit; or consult, covenant with, entertaine, or
employ, feede, or reward any evill or wicked spirit, to or for any intent
or purpose; or take up any dead man, woman or child, out of his, her, or
their grave, or any other place, where the dead body resteth, or the skin,
bone, or other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any
manner of Witchcraft, Sorcery, Charme, or Enchantment; or shall use,
practise, or exercise any Witchcraft, Enchantment, Charme or Sorcery,
whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or
lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof. Such offenders, duly and
lawfully convicted and attainted, shall suffer death.
‘If any person shall take upon him by Witchcraft, Inchantment, Charme or
Sorcery, to tell or declare in what place any treasure of Gold or Silver,
should or might be found, or had in the Earth, or other secret places, or
where Goods, or things lost, or stolen, should be found, or become: Or to
the intent to provoke any person to unlawfull love, or whereby any Cattell
or Goods of any person shall be destroyed, wasted or impaired, or to
destroy or hurt any person in his, or her body, though the same be not
effected, &c, a yeares Imprisonment and Pillory, &c, and the second
conviction, Death.’
Here, then, we have a clear definition of what a witch is, and as it does
not state anything as to sex, we may imagine that it includes both male
and female, both wizards and witches. But the softer sex undoubtedly
predominated in the commission of this crime, wizards being very seldom
brought to justice. And King James I.[26] gives us the reason:
‘_Philomathes._ But before yee goe further, permit me, I pray you, to
interrupt you one worde, which yee haue put mee in memory of, by speaking
of Women. What can be the cause that there are twentie women giuen to that
craft, where there is one man?
‘_Epistemon._ The reason is easie, for, as that sexe is frailer than man
is, so is it easier to be intrapped in these grosse snares of the Diuell,
as was ouer well proued to be true, by the Serpent’s deceiving of _Eua_ at
the beginning, which makes him the homelier with that sex sensine.
Reginald Scot, than whom there can be no better English authority, tells
us[27] ‘who they be that are called witches.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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