Witchcraft Act
In
England, a succession of
Witchcraft Acts have governed
witchcraft and provided penalties for its practice. To consider the changes in these laws is to make a chronicle of received ideas about the subject.
The first
Act of Parliament directed specifically against witchcraft was the act
De hæretico comburendo, passed at the instigation of
Archbishop Thomas Arundel in
1401. It specifically named witchcraft —
sortilegium — "
sorcery", or "
divination", as a species of
heresy, and provided that unless the accused
witch abjured these beliefs, she was to be burnt at the stake. This law, however, was directed against an ecclesiastical offence, not technically a
felony at common law. Offenders were tried before an ecclesiastical tribunal — the
Inquisition,
per se, did not operate in England, but the procedure was comparable. The penalty of burning at the stake was prescribed for ecclesiastical offences only because the Church daintily shied away from the shedding of blood.
It was not until the start of the
sixteenth century, however, that religious tensions resulted in increased penalties for witchcraft in England. The Witchcraft Act 1541
[1541 (33 Hen. 8) C A P. VIII] provided that
"It shall be Felony to practise, or cause to be practised Conjuration, Witchcraft, Enchantment or Sorcery, to get Money; or to consume any Person in his Body, Members or Goods; or to provoke any Person to unlawful Love; or for the Despight of Christ, or Lucre of Money, to pull down any Cross; or to declare where Goods stolen be."
Felonies were punishable with death. A later statute of
Henry VIII provided the same
death penalty for "invoking or conjuring an evil spirit". This statute was repealed by his more liberal son,
Edward VI. During the reign of Edward's successor
Mary I no new law governing witchcraft was passed.
England's most notorious Witchcraft Act was passed early in the reign of
Elizabeth I. This act of
1563 provided that anyone who should "use, practise, or exercise any Witchcraft, Enchantment, Charm, or Sorcery, whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroyed", was guilty of felony without
benefit of clergy, and was to be put to death. This law was broadened further by Elizabeth's successor
James I, a king who wrote a treatise on
Dæmonologie and who, as
James VI of Scotland, took a personal interest in the trial of some accused witches at
Berwick on Tweed. In
1604, the first year of James's reign, the Elizabethan act was broadened to bring the penalty of death without benefit of clergy to any one who invoked evil spirits or communed with
familiar spirits. It was this
statute that was enforced by
Matthew Hopkins, the notorious "
Witch-Finder Generall".
The acts of Elizabeth and James changed the law of witchcraft in two major respects. First, by making witchcraft a felony, they removed the accused witches from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts to the courts of
common law. This provided, at least, that the accused witches theoretically enjoyed the benefits of ordinary criminal procedure. Burning at the stake was eliminated, except in cases of witchcraft that were also
petty treason; most instead were hanged. However, by making witchcraft an ordinary
crime, they invoked all the penalties of felonies against the convicted witch, including
escheat which forfeited the convict's land and goods to the Crown. This gave local officials a financial stake in finding witches to convict, and led to the most pervasive
witchhunts in English history. After the
Restoration, the witch hunting gradually died down, not because people had ceased to believe in or fear witches, but because the witch-hunting enterprise smacked of the "enthusiasm" and revolutionary
Puritanism that led to the
regicide of
Charles I.
This statute was replaced under
George II by the Witchcraft Act 1735
[1735 (9 Geo. 2) C A P. V.] that marked a complete reversal in attitudes. No longer were people to be hanged for consorting with evil spirits. Rather, a person who
pretended to have the power to call up spirits, or foretell the future, or cast spells, or discover the whereabouts of stolen goods was to be punished as a
vagrant and a
con artist, subject to fines and imprisonment.
As late as
1944,
Helen Duncan was the last person to be convicted under the Witchcraft Act, authorities fearing that by her alleged clairvoyant powers she could betray details of the
D-Day preparations. She spent nine months in prison.In
1951 the last Witchcraft Act was repealed, largely at the instigation of
Spiritualist media.
It is widely suggested that Astrology is covered by the witchcraft act. From the 1930's onwards many tabloid newspapers and magazines carried astrology colums but none were ever prosecuted.
The Witchcraft act is still legally in force in the Republic of Ireland.
