17th Century Witchcraft

Witchcraft in the 1600’s in the UK.When I started writing Elizabeth’s Betrayal I was doing a lot of research into witchcraft in the 1600’s mainly in the UK and London itself.

After slogging through hundreds of websites and books I came across many interesting factor’s.

One being that in this century not many people believe in magic or witchcraft but in the 1600’s it was a certain thing, they were a very superstitious and ignorant people and convicting people accused of witchcraft and killing them was a normal thing.

To you and me, it sounds horrendous and quite evil of course but back then it wasn’t to them, witches were looked at to be responsible for many death’s including babies born stillborn and people dying from diseases.

When the great plague hit everyone presumed it was the doing of witches and hangings, burnings etc became more common.

In fact anything that happened that was slightly out of the ordinary was blamed immediately on witchcraft, even if someone owned a pet cat or had a strange scar or even a physical or mental disability were accused of witchcraft.

The opinion was that the church actually used witchcraft to get rid of those whose beliefs didn’t fit.It was also mainly the poor and homeless who were targeted as no one wanted to accuse someone of high stature, also it was mainly woman who were accused as men dominated in that era and woman were looked at as inferior.

The fact that witchcraft was punishable by law seems strange, as if we had a law like that now, it would go against out human rights, there would be riots and protests and people would look laughably upon this.

so why did people believe in it so much then, the answer is simple, they were uneducated and followed what ever the church said.

The way they tested if people were in fact witches was pretty horrible, one man was pressed to death by stones, others hung, others pushed into rivers to drown to see if they would float, if they did they were witches, and if they didn’t they would die anyway. So there was really no way out, it was either you died and they were sorry for accusing you when you passed there “witchcraft test” or they thought you were a witch so killed you anyway.

All i know is what horrible times it must have been to live in for young woman.

Even queen Elizabeth’s mother(Anne Boleyn) was accused of witchcraft so Elizabeth had quite the lenient view on witchcraft.

After doing some more research i found out that quite a famous hanging took place in my home town of Exeter and three witches were hung at the end of the 17th century just before it became illegal.

I would love to hear your views on this topic and if I have missed anything out.

How do you feel about the people who were killed just because they had something wrong with them?

Do you yourself believe that witches were responsible for the plague and deaths that happened?