Witch Hunting in Tudor and Stuart England

Witchcraft, in reality, was little more than herbal medicine, but what made so many people for so long so scared of witches that they were hunted down and executed in large numbers in what has become known (wrongly) as the ‘witch craze’? This talk examines the nature of the so-called ‘Great European Witch Craze’ that supposedly took place between 1450 and 1740 and disposes of several myths surrounding it. The nature of witchcraft is examined, as is the hunt that took place on the European Continent. The English Witch Hunt was a much milder (and, to some, more disappointing) affair. However, the talk looks at the three most celebrated cases of English witch hunting (1582 Brian Darcy in Essex, 1612 Roger Nowell and the Witches of Pendle, & Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed Witchfinder-General in Essex between 1644 and 1646). One rather different case (that of the 1692 Witches of Salem in Massachusetts) is considered as a case of English colonial witch hunting.