The
American Historical Review
A CASE OF WITCHCRAFT
THE accessible materials for a history of Elizabethan witchcraft are scattered and fragmentary. Much is lost, and much remains inedited. Yet we cannot hope to understand the prosecutions of the last sixty years of the seventeenth century, whether in Old England or in New, until we arrive at a substantially accurate comprehension of what was thought and done at the close of the great queen's reign. It is not only the dogmas of the theologians, the tenets of the physicians, and the rules of the law that we need to know, but, above everything else, the beliefs and feelings of the populace—of the folk itself. For it is in this matter of witchcraft, if anywhere, that public opinion is supreme. The populace may, perhaps, be restrained by the more enlightened part of the community, but the so-called governing classes cannot prosecute with success if the populace does not approve. Witch-hunting never flourishes unless the common people are eager for it. It is to them that the officers of the law must look for testimony, and it is the jury of the vicinage that renders the verdict. Experience has taught, over and over again, how hard it is for the most skeptical judge to bring about an acquittal in a particular case when the neighborhood from which the jury comes is convinced of the reality of the crime in general.
There was a famous witch-trial at Exeter, England, in 1682. Roger North was present, and here is his account of the state of public opinion:
The women were very old, decrepit, and impotent, and were brought to the assizes with as much noise and fury of the rabble against them as could be shewed on any occassion. The stories of their arts were in everyone's mouth, and they were not content to belie them in the country, but even in the city where they were to be tried miracles were fathered upon them, as that the judge's coach was fixed upon the castle bridge, and the like. All which the country believed, and accordingly
