The 1604 Witchcraft Act was an important piece of legislation that was passed in England during the reign of King James I. This act replaced the previous laws regarding witchcraft that had been in place since 1542. Prior to the 1604 act, witchcraft was considered a crime against the church and was dealt with through ecclesiastical courts. The main purpose of the new act was to define and strengthen the laws against witchcraft, as well as to prescribe the punishment for those who were found guilty. One of the key provisions of the act was that witchcraft was considered a felony, which was a much more serious offense than it had been previously. Under the 1604 act, a person could be charged with witchcraft if they were believed to have made a pact with the devil, used magic to harm others, or practiced divination or fortune-telling.
Blog Post Witchcraft law up to the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692
Early in 1692, a group of girls in Salem Village (now the town of Danvers) began to accuse people of witchcraft.
10/31/2017- Trial Court Law Libraries
Accusations swelled, and soon, many people had been examined and jailed, awaiting trial.
What laws were followed during the Salem witch trials of 1692?
Under the original royal charter (1629) of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, criminal law was administered by the Court of Assistants, which consisted of the Governor, Deputy-Governor, and a number of Assistants. There was no statutory criminal law in the colony at that time, and without legal training, the Court of Assistants judged cases and punishments based on what they knew of English law and by their instincts of what they thought was right.
The primary English law about witchcraft was the so-called Witchcraft Act of 1604, actually An Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft and Dealing with Evil and Wicked Spirits. This made witchcraft a felony; a witch convicted of a minor offense could receive a year in prison, but any witch accused and found guilty a second time was sentenced to death. [To read the Act, see this 2008 conference volume Witchcraft and the Act of 1604 .
In 1641, the General Court (i.e., the legislative body of the Massachusetts Bay Colony) drafted the Body of Liberties, a collection of of civil and criminal laws and rights. Most of these were later included in the colony’s first printed compilation of statutes issued as The Book of the General Lawes and Libertyes Concerning the Inhabitants of Massachusetts (1648). The Body of Liberties originally had twelve capital offenses, including witchcraft. The law on witchcraft was short, and cited Biblical sources for its authority:
“If any man or woman be a witch, that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death. Exod. 22. 188; Deut. 13. 6, 10; Deut. 17. 2, 6.”
(A “familiar spirit” was a devil or demon that aided the witch to perform bad deeds through magic.)
Facsimiles of this book are owned by the Massachusetts Trial Court Law Libraries ; and a facsimile is available to read on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts website (see especially page 94).
In practice, few people were executed for witchcraft before the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. Instead, juries were reluctant to convict, or the accused were given sentences for lighter offenses. In the English tradition, although the rules of evidence were vague, legal experts insisted on clear and “convincing” proof of a crime. The best proof was a confession, and the testimony of at least two trustworthy people that the accused had acted with magical powers given by the devil. Even confessions were considered doubtful without other evidence. So-called “spectral evidence”, in which a victim testifies to experiencing an attack by a witch in spirit form, invisible to everyone else, was not accepted as evidence.
The Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 happened at the worst possible time. The charter of the colony had been temporarily suspended (1684-1691) due to political and religious friction between the colony and England. A new charter (1691) arrived from England in May 1692, along with the new governor, but as yet, the General Court had not had time to create any laws. Nevertheless, the new governor created a special court, the Court of Oyer and Terminer [“to hear and determine”] to deal with the witch cases. The commission that created this court said that the judges were to act “according to the law and custom of England and of this their Majesties’ Province.” But this ignored the difference between the laws of England and the old laws of New England.
In the absence of guidance by specific colony laws, and acting in consonance with the general paranoia of the community, the judges famously accepted “spectral evidence”, and other untrustworthy kinds of evidence, as proof of guilt. Moreover, the magistrates let it be known that an accused witch could avoid execution by confessing, repenting, and putting the blame on someone else. This caused the accusations to multiply. Nineteen men and women were executed by hanging, one was killed by torture, and others died in prison.
In October 1692, the governor dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer, and in December 1692, the General Court passed An Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft, and Dealing with Evil and Wicked Spirits .
This law, modeled on the English Witchcraft Act of 1604, mandated the death penalty for severe acts and repeat offenders, and imprisonment for lesser acts. A new Superior Court of Judicature was created to serve as the highest court in Massachusetts, and in January 1693 it began to hear the remaining witch trials. More importantly, the governor instructed the judges not to accept spectral evidence as proof of guilt. Therefore, most of the remaining witch trials resulted in acquittal. The governor pardoned the rest. The time of witchcraft hysteria in Massachusetts was over.
For more on the Salem witch trials, see the University of Virginia’s Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project .
Written By: Gary Smith
Under the 1604 act, a person could be charged with witchcraft if they were believed to have made a pact with the devil, used magic to harm others, or practiced divination or fortune-telling. Additionally, it was a crime to possess or use objects such as charms, potions, or spells that were believed to have magical powers. The act also extended the definition of witchcraft to include the summoning of evil spirits or demons.
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An Act against Witchcraft
BE it enacted by the King our Soveraigne Lord; the Lords Spirituall and Temporall, and the Commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that the Statute made in the fifth yeare of the Reigne of our late Soveraigne Lady of most Famous and Happy memory, Queen Elizabeth, Entituled, An Acte againste Conjurations, Inchantments and Witchcraftes; be from the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel next coming, for and concerning all offences to bee committed after the same Feaste, utterly repealed.
And for the better restraining of said offences, and more severe punishing the same, be it further Enacted by the Authority aforesaid; That if any person or persons, after the said Feast of St. Michael the Archangell next coming, shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit: or shall consult, covenant with, entertaine, imploy, feed, or reward any evil and wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose; or take up any dead man, woman, or child, out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resteth; or the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person, to be imployed, or used in any manner of Witchcraft, Sorcery, Charme, or Inchantment, or shall use, practise, or exercise, any Witchcraft, Incantment, Charme or Sorcery, whereby any person shall be Killed, Destroyed, Wasted, Consumed, Pined, or Lamed, in His or Her body, or any part therof; that then every such Offender, or Offenders, their Ayders, Abettors, and Counsellors, being of the said offences duly and lawfully Convicted and Attainted, shall suffer paines of death as a Felon or Felons, and shall lose the priviledge and benefit of Clergy and Sanctuary.
And further, to the intent that all manner of practise, use or exercise of Witchcraft, Inchantment, Charme, or Sorcery, should be from henceforth utterly avoided, abolished, and taken away: Be it Enacted by the Authority of this present Parliament, that if any person or persons, shall from and after the said Feast of Saint Michael the Archangell next coming, take upon him or them, by Witchcraft, Inchantment, Charme, or Sorcery, to tell or declare in what place any Treasure of Golde or Silver should or might be found or had in the earth, or other secret places; or where goods, or things lost, or stolen, should be found or become, or to the intent to provoke any person to unlawful love, or whereby any Cattell, or Goods of any person shall be destroyed, wasted, or impaired; or to hurt or destroy any person in his or her body, although the same be not effected and done, that then all and every such person or persons so offending, and being therof lawfully convicted, shall for the said offence suffer imprisonment by the space of one whole year, without baile or maineprise; and once in every quarter of the said year, shall in some Market-Town, upon the Market day, or at such time as any faire shall be kept there, stand openly upon the Pillory by the space of six hours, and there shall openly confesse his or her errour and offence. And if any person or persons, being once convicted of the same offences as is aforesaid, do eftsoones perpetrate and commit the like offence, that then every such offender, being of any the said offences the second time lawfully, and duly convicted, and attainted as is aforesaid, shall suffer paines of death as a Felon, or Felons, and shall lose the benefit and priviledge of Clergy, and Sanctuary, saving to the wife of such person as shall offend in any thing contrary to this Act, her title of Dower, and also to the Heire and Successor of every such person, his, or their titles of inheritance, succession, and other rights, as though no such attainder of the Ancestor or Predecessor had been made: provided alwayes, that if the offender in any the cases aforesaid, shall happen to be a Peer of this Realm, then his tryall therein, to be had by his Peers, as it is used in cases of Felony or Treason, and not otherwise.
Transcript created by John Levin for The Statutes Project
England’s Witch Trials Were Lawful
While witch trials might seem like the epitome of collective madness–so much so that modern cases of mob justice are regularly called “witch hunts,” they were surprisingly bound up in the law.
The monarchs of 1600s and 1700s England believed that controlling witchcraft was a way to control the supernatural, writes Malcolm Gaskill for the journal Past & Present. The religious Reformation occasioned by Henry VIII “was widely believed to have unleashed antichristian forces,” Gaskill writes, “such as magicians able to predict, even cause, the death of the monarch.” In an attempt to prove that they had absolute control–even over deciding what did and did not constitute witchcraft–in the 1500s Tudor monarchs enshrined into law provisions establishing witchcraft as being under the purview of the court system that they oversaw. This changed who was seen as a witch and how they were prosecuted over time.
The Witchcraft Act of 1542 was England’s first witchcraft law, enacted during Henry VIII's reign. It established witchcraft as a crime that could be punished by death, and also defined what constituted witchcraft–using invocations or other specifically magical acts to hurt someone, get money, or behave badly towards Christianity. Being a witch–whether or not specific harm was caused to another person–was enough to get you executed.
This law only lasted until 1547, when Henry VIII died. It wasn’t replaced with anything until Elizabeth I’s reign, which began in 1558. In 1563, An Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts was passed. It made causing anyone to be “killed or destroyed” by use of witchcraft punishable by death.
“By 1560 there were two stages to criminal prosecution,” writes Gaskill: “ examination and committal by a Justice of the Peace, followed by arraignment and trial.”
After Elizabeth I died and her success James I took the throne, though, things really went off the rails. “He passed a new Act that made almost all forms of witchcraft punishable by death,” writes Erin Hillis for Impetus. In 1597, several years before taking the throne, James had written a book on witchcraft, Daemonologie. When he became king in 1604, he quickly enacted a new law. However, she writes, the conviction rate for witchcraft actually went down under the 1604 law, writes Hillis–likely because one of the other things that law did was outlaw the use of torture to get a confession.
However, like the Tudors before him, James I was using witchcraft law to help remind everyone who was in charge. In the climate of paranoia that shaped his reign, writes Frances Cronin for the BBC, hunting witches (just like hunting Catholic rebels like Guy Fawkes) became “a mandate” for the British. England’s most infamous witch trials happened during this period–including the trial of the Pendle Witches, which began on this day in 1612.
This trial, writes Cronin, used something James had written in Daemonologie to justify using a child as the prime witness. In other criminal trials of the time, children's testimony would not have been accepted, but James had written that there's an exception for witches. “Children, women and liars can be witnesses over high treason against God,” was used as justification for using nine-year-old Jennet Device as the chief witness in the case. In the end, Device’s testimony convicted her own mother and grandmother as well as eight other people. They were all hanged.
Device’s testimony eventually provided the precedent for using child witnesses in Boston’s Salem witch trials–even though by 1692, the idea of trying someone for witchcraft was dying down in both England and America.
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The punishment for being found guilty of witchcraft under the 1604 act was severe. The act prescribed that the accused should be put to death by hanging, which was the standard punishment for felonies at the time. The act also allowed for the seizure of the accused person's property, which was then used to pay for their trial and execution. Although the 1604 Witchcraft Act was one of the most well-known laws against witchcraft in England, it did not put an end to the persecution of those accused of witchcraft. Trials and executions for witchcraft continued throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, although they became less common over time. The last execution for witchcraft in England took place in 1685. In conclusion, the 1604 Witchcraft Act was a significant piece of legislation that defined and strengthened the laws against witchcraft in England. It introduced the offense of witchcraft as a felony and prescribed the punishment of death by hanging for those found guilty. Despite its intentions, the act did not put an end to the persecution of witches, which continued for many years after its passage..
Reviews for "Evaluating the Efficacy of the 1604 Witchcraft Act in Suppressing Witchcraft"
1. John - 2/5 stars: The 1604 witchcraft act is a terrible piece of legislation that allows for the persecution of innocent people based on superstitions and unfounded beliefs. It is a clear violation of human rights and goes against the principles of justice and fairness. This act has caused much suffering and has led to the execution of countless individuals who were falsely accused of witchcraft. It is high time that this archaic law is repealed and we move towards a more enlightened and rational society.
2. Jane - 1/5 stars: The 1604 witchcraft act is a prime example of the ignorance and fear that plagued society in the past. It allowed for the scapegoating and persecution of innocent individuals, particularly women, who were accused of practicing witchcraft. This law is nothing more than a tool for religious and political authorities to exert control over the population and suppress dissent. It is a shameful part of history that should be condemned and remembered as a dark period of human rights violations.
3. David - 2/5 stars: The 1604 witchcraft act is a deeply flawed piece of legislation that has caused immense harm throughout history. It contributes to the demonization and marginalization of certain groups within society, particularly women who were often targeted as witches. The Act relies on unsubstantiated beliefs and allows for baseless accusations to ruin lives. It is high time that we reevaluate such laws that perpetuate discrimination and work towards a more inclusive and fair legal system.
4. Sarah - 1/5 stars: The 1604 witchcraft act is an archaic and oppressive law that has caused immense suffering and injustice. It allowed for the persecution and execution of innocent individuals based on irrational fears and superstitions. This law reflects a dark time in our history when people were quick to blame supernatural forces for their problems instead of acknowledging the complexities of the world. It is a reminder of how easily prejudices and ignorance can take hold in society, leading to unimaginable atrocities. The 1604 witchcraft act should be abolished to ensure that such gross injustices are not repeated in the future.