Witchcraft Acts

But the reality is that the legal, religious, and cultural foundations for these events were already being laid during Shakespeare's lifetime.

Through developments like the 1604 Witchcraft Act, King James I's ideas about demonic conspiracy, and growing fears surrounding prophecy, spirits, healing, and the devil for the general culture of England.

Our guest today is Marian Gibson, an expert on witches and witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the author of Witchland, her latest book that explores the witch panics of Civil War era Britain, revealing how war, religious extremism, local conflict, and earlier beliefs about witchcraft combined to turn suspicion into persecution.

For today's conversation, we're going to explore both the terrible events that followed Shakespeare's lifetime and the earlier beliefs, laws, and conflicts that set the stage for their arrival.

Thank you for inviting me back.

In her book, Witchland, Marion writes about an event called Witch Panic.

While this event for the book takes place during the Civil War, which is a couple decades after Shakespeare's death, the legal foundation for it was laid during Shakespeare's lifetime, particularly with the 1604 Witchcraft Act.

Marion, what did that act change about the definition of witchcraft, and how did it turn comparatively benign practices like healing, divination, or communicating with spirits into crimes that could carry the death penalty?

If anyone doesn't know about the campaign, it's gained a lot of popularity and publicity recently.

It's all about achieving apology, legal pardon, and a memorial for the nearly 4,000 people, mostly women, in Scotland who were persecuted under the Witchcraft Act from the 16th to 18th centuries.

And These two quarrelsome dames, as they call themselves, have written this book that is all about the history of that period.

It's really well researched, so you're going to find out a lot of information.

Her name was Nicola Sturgeon.

And she issued a formal apology on behalf of Scotland to apologise for everyone who was accused and killed of witchcraft under Scotland's Witchcraft Act of 1563.

I had no idea.

Like I obviously

okay um yeah and then the king james thing like as maline said like you know king james was he had an interest an invested interest in demons and he he literally wrote a book called demonology in 1597 He was involved in the North Brunswick witch trials.

He was the one who passed the Witchcraft Act of 1604.

Like he and there's I mean, when Malayne says like we need to do a whole series on him, we do because it's like, was he actually a witch hunting witches? Yes.

Like, what was his involvement in the occult? We've been looking into what his involvement was in Freemasonry.

Her confession, recorded by the royal officials, served as a textbook for how James saw the devil's work at play.

It is essential to remember that in Scotland, witchcraft had become capital offense under the Witchcraft Act fifteen sixty-three, meaning courts were already primed for executions if they believed guilt.

The law also permitted torture to extract confessions.

This was standard procedure within Scottish criminal justice.

But how do we gauge whether that belief was sincerely religious or simply an excuse for tightening control over Scottish society? We know he wrote Daemonologie partly as a defense against critics who argued he favored superstition.

The final question, I think, is about consequence.

Did the North Berwick trials alter subsequent policy, or were they merely a flashpoint within larger European witch hunts? Some scholars argue that the trials influenced the sixteen fourteen Witchcraft Act in Scotland, which broadened legal provisions for punishment.

Others say that after James became King of England in sixteen oh three, his focus shifted away from witchcraft, and Scottish authorities had to adopt stricter standards.

It was said he had boasted in Gloucester Gold that he had plagued Mompesson and would give him no rest until he had his drum back.

When he came before a court the second time at Salisbury under the Witchcraft Act of 1604, sorcery was on the list of charges.

He wasn't convicted of it.

The evidence fell short.

On the 8th of March 2020, International Women's Day, we launched the Feminist Witches of Scotland campaign.

The Witchcraft Act, enforced between 1563 and 1736, saw thousands of people, mostly women, accused and executed as witches in Scotland in the country's biggest and most brutal miscarriage of justice.

Our campaign had three aims.

To get a formal state apology for those accused of witchcraft.

A great device.

I mean, I love the play, but in our context, like, well, who are they? You know, why are they on this heath, this land with the castle? What is the heath and why are they there? And so we went through various permutations of what that might look like.

But the definite thing was our chorus are not witches in the sense of the definition of the Witchcraft Act and all of those trials.

They are women with smedham.

Dee would return to England to find his home in shambles, his library and scientific equipment looted.

The rule of James I would now mean there would be no truck with sorcery, especially with the Witchcraft Act, and John Dee was a pariah.

This was an absolute nightmare abroad and the beginning of another nightmare back at home for Jane Dee.

She would have three further children, one actually named for that very Enochian spirit that instigated the strange doctrine of the wife-swapping, Madimi.

Nothing.

The Witchcraft Act of 1563 made witchcraft, and even consulting with a witch, a capital crime in Scotland, which was not yet unified with England.

So you'd expect, some mention of the 5,000 trials and approximately 1,000 executions that occurred between the years 1590 and 1727.

Considering those numbers, it's a little odd that this isn't brought up.

Unbeknown to the state security services, some IRA or Irish Republican Army hitmen were waiting for him in Regent's Park, where they had prepared to attack his vehicle with guns as he drove through.

Undoubtedly, Churchill's belief in the paranormal played a big part in the Helen Duncan case in 1944 and the later repeal of the Witchcraft Act of 1735.

Duncan, a medium, had, during a private Portsmouth seance, claimed that a dead sailor told her that a British warship, HMS Barham, had been sunk during enemy action.

A Lieutenant R.

Worth of the Royal Navy was among the guests who discovered shortly afterwards on return to his office that HMS Barham was indeed sunk and that the news had only just come through.

Suspecting that Duncan was a German agent and with D-Day not too far away she was immediately arrested with other guests for vagrancy which was later amended to conspiracy before finally appearing in court charged under the Witchcraft Act.

Churchill was furious when he heard of this trial and wrote a ministerial message to the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison.

Give me a report of the 1735 Witchcraft Act.