Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands: Transcripts from the Official Records of the Guernsey Royal Court, with an English Translation and Historical Introduction — John Shaqi
Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands: Transcripts from the Official Records of the Guernsey Royal Court, with an English Translation and Historical IntroductionPitts, John Linwood
History
Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands: Transcripts from the Official Records of the Guernsey Royal Court, with an English Translation and Historical Introduction
of having burnt nine hundred persons in fifteen years; in
one German principality alone, at least two hundred and
forty-two persons were burnt between 1646 and 1651,
including many children from one to six years of age; in
1749 Maria Renata was burnt at Wurtzburg for witchcraft; on
January 17th, 1775, nine old women were burnt at Kalish, in
Poland, on a charge of having bewitched and rendered
unfruitful the lands belonging to the palatinate; at
Landshut, in Bavaria, in 1756, a young girl of thirteen
years was convicted of impure intercourse with the Devil and
put to death. There were also executions for sorcery at
Seville, in Spain, in 1781, and at Glarus, in Switzerland,
in 1783; while even as late as December 15th, 1802, five
women were condemned to death for sorcery at Patna, in the
Bengal Presidency, by the Brahmins, and were all executed.
IN ENGLAND the record of Witchcraft is also a
melancholy chapter. A statute was enacted declaring all
witchcraft and sorcery to be felony without benefit of
clergy, 33 Henry VIII. 1541; and again 5 Elizabeth, 1562,
and 1 James I. 1603. The 73rd Canon of the Church, 1603,
prohibits the Clergy from casting out devils. Barrington
estimates the judicial murders for witchcraft in England,
during two hundred years, at 30,000; Matthew Hopkins, the
"witch-finder," caused the judicial murder of about one
hundred persons in Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, 1645-7; Sir
Matthew Hale burnt two persons for witchcraft in 1664; about
1676 seventeen or eighteen persons were burnt as witches at
St. Osyths, in Essex; in 1705 two pretended witches were
executed at Northampton, and five others seven years
afterwards; in 1716, a Mrs. Hicks, and her daughter, a
little girl of nine years old, are said to have been hanged
as witches at Huntingdon, but of this there seems to be some
doubt. The last really authentic trial in England for
witchcraft took place in 1712, when the jury convicted an
old woman named Jane Wenham, of Walkerne, a little village
in the north of Hertfordshire, and she was sentenced to be
hanged. The judge, however, quietly procured a reprieve for
her, and a kind-hearted gentleman in the neighbourhood gave
her a cottage to live in, where she ended her days in peace.
With regard to the mobbing of reputed sorcerers, it is
recorded that in the year 1628, Dr. Lamb, a so-called
wizard, who had been under the protection of the Duke of
Buckingham, was torn to pieces by a London mob. While even
as late as April 22nd, 1751, a wild and tossing rabble of
about 5,000 persons beset and broke into the work-house at
Tring, in Hertfordshire, where seizing Luke Osborne and his
wife, two inoffensive old people suspected of witchcraft,
they ducked them in a pond till the old woman died. After
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account