Later English cases and their decline
The most notorious of all English witch-hunts, because of the sheer scale of the prosecutions, occurred in the aftermath of the Civil War, while people were panicking about the forces of darkness and the apocalyptic struggle being waged between God and the Devil. Matthew Hopkins was able to take advantage of the disorganized character of the postwar magistracy, staffed with inexperienced justices, often relatively poorly educated, who were intruded because of their loyalty to the Parliamentary regime.
Hopkins
centred his activities in Essex and the surrounding counties. Despite his
short career, which started only in 1645, it has been estimated he managed
to condemn over 200 people to death. At first he was received enthusiastically,
but by 1646 his influence was declining, partly due to the exposure of
his methods in John Gaule?s Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches
(1646). For a good treatment of this episode, with new documentary
material, see chapter 5 of James Sharpe,
Instruments of Darkness
(London, 1996) or his essay in Jonathan Barry et al., eds.,
Witchcraft
in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1996).
Nevertheless,
the story of Matthew Hopkins's brave battle against witchcraft continued
to be retailed by popular authors, such as Nathaniel Crouch, in his The
Kingdom of Darkness (London, 1688). This image accompanied Crouch's
account of an episode from the Hopkins trials: "George Turner inform'd
upon Oath, that going to see Elizabeth Clark after she was apprehended,
and asking her whether she had any hand in the drowning of one Thomas
Turner his brother, who was cast away at Sea about two years and an
half before, she answered, That the old Beldam West raised that
wind which sunk his Hoy, and that she had no hand in it."
The excesses of the mid-century led English gentlemen, who served as magistrates and grand jurors, to doubt the evidence being presented in witchcraft accusations. The Restoration saw an outbreak of scepticism among lawyers and judges, who increasingly regarded such tales as popular superstition or religious fanaticism. Such a division can be very clearly seen in the case of the Lowestoft witches, tried at Bury St. Edmunds in 1662 by Matthew Hale. Intellectuals who wanted to retain some role for spirits in the world, such as Henry More, Joseph Glanvill and Robert Boyle, labelled their opponents "Sadducees" and collected well witnessed accounts of ghosts and witches, to create a natural history of the invisible world. Their aim was to defend English Protestantism against both materialism and Roman Catholicism.
Bovet, a West Country gentleman, was one of the less distinguished anti-Sadducism authors.The first part of this work is largely culled from two earlier writers, Glanvill and Daniel Brevint, Dean of Lincoln Cathedral. The second part consists of fifteen ghost stories. Bovet had as a major aim an attack on Catholicism at Court, this work being published at a time when English Protestants were deeply concerned about the likelihood of the Duke of York (later James II) inheriting the throne. In Bovet's view, Catholic priestcraft and diabolism were inseparable, as can be seen from his frontispiece.
Richard Boulton, (c.1676-c.1724), A Compleat History of Magick, Sorcery,
and Witchcraft : containing I. The most Authentick and best attested RELATIONS
of Magicians, Sorcerers, Witches, Apparitions, Spectres, Ghosts, Daemons,
and other Preternatural Appearances. II. A Collection of several very scarce
and valuable TRYALS of Witches, particularly that famous one, of
the WITCHES of Warboyse. III. An Account of the first Rise of Magicians
and Witches, showing the Contracts they make with the Divel,
and what Methods they take to accomplish their Infernal Designs. IV. A
full Confutation of all the Arguments that have ever been produced against
the Belief of Apparitions, Witches, &c. with a Judgment concerning
Spirits,
by the late Learned Mr. JOHN LOCKE.
This work and its sequel, written by a hack medical author,
are among the last significant defences of the belief in witchcraft that
were published in England, although the belief did not die out altogether
in educated circles. It was lambasted by a future Anglican bishop
and generally derided by Whigs. Tories, such as the founder of Methodism
John Wesley, continued to maintain a belief in witchcraft.
Two pamphlets concerning Joan Peterson of Wapping, 1652
A sceptical intervention in the dispute over the Jane Wenham case
Diane Purkiss, "Invasions: Prophecy and Bewitchment in the Case of Margaret Muschamp", Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 17 (1998) 235-253. PN 471.T84
Diane Purkiss, "Desire and its Deformities: Fantasies of Witchcraft in the English Civil War", Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27(1997) 103-132
Louise Jackson, "Witches, Wives and Mothers: witchcraft persecution and women's confessions in seventeenth-century England", Women's History 4 (1995) [PDF file] short version in Oldridge reader
Peter Rushton, "Texts of Authority: Witchcraft Accusations and the Demonstration of Truth in Early Modern England", in Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture , ed. Stuart Clark (2000) [PDF file]
Tamsin Spargo, "The Fathers' Seductions: Improper Relations of Desire in Seventeenth-Century Nonconformist Communities", Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 17 (1998) 255-268.
Phyllis J.Guskin, "The Context of Witchcraft: The Case of Jane Wenham (1712)", Eighteenth-Century Studies 15 (1981) 48-71
Thomas Harmon Jobe, "The Devil in Restoration Science: The Glanvill-Webster Debate", Isis 72 (1981) 343-356
W.B.Carnochan, "Witch-Hunting and Belief in 1751: The Case of Thomas Colley and Ruth Osborne", Journal of Social History 4 (1971) 389-403
For a thorough treatment of the politics of the witchcraft
debate in late seventeenth-century England, see Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft
and its Transformations, c.1650-c.1750 (Oxford, 1997).
