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An 1562 [1] Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts (5 Eliz. 1.c. 16) was passed early in the reign of Elizabeth I.It was in some respects more merciful towards those found guilty of witchcraft than its predecessor, demanding the death penalty only where harm had been caused; lesser offences were punishable by a term of imprisonment.
Witch trials were most frequent in England in the first half of the 17th century. They reached their most intense phase during the English Civil War of the 1640s and the Puritan era of the 1650s. This was a period of intense witch hunts, known for witch hunters such as Matthew Hopkins .
About eighty people were accused of practicing witchcraft in a witch-hunt that lasted throughout New England from 1647 to 1663. Thirteen women and two men were executed. [ 4 ] The Salem witch trials followed in 1692–93, culminating in the executions of 20 people.
In Peter Elmer's novel Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and politics in early modern England [32] he argues and provides evidence for the fact that many of England's great witch trials occurred at times when political parties and governing bodies felt that their authority was being threatened. During the years of 1629 to 1637 no trials occurred in ...
At least 500 “witches” are thought to have been executed in England between 1542 and 1735, when witchcraft was a capital offense, according to government figures, although historians think the ...
Throughout the medieval era, mainstream Christian doctrine had denied the belief in the existence of witches and witchcraft, condemning it as a pagan superstition. [14] Some have argued that the work of the Dominican Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century helped lay the groundwork for a shift in Christian doctrine, by which certain Christian theologians eventually began to accept the possibility ...
The Witchcraft Act 1735 (9 Geo. 2. c. 5) was an act of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1735 which made it a crime for a person to claim that any human being had magical powers or was guilty of practising witchcraft. With this, the law abolished the hunting and executions of witches in Great Britain.
The extension of the Witchcraft Act in 1649 sparked a intense witch hunting period. [1] This spilled into the north of England and in Newcastle. [1] 1649 saw Puritan Magistrates at Newcastle send two sergeants, Thomas Shevel and Cuthbert Nicholson, to Scotland to bring an un-named Scottish witch-finder to try witches in Newcastle. [1] [2] [3]