Preview

A History of Witchcraft in England

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
145570 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
A History of Witchcraft in England
A History of Witchcraft in England from by Wallace Notestein

1

A History of Witchcraft in England from by Wallace Notestein
The Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718, by Wallace Notestein This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 Author: Wallace Notestein Release Date: March 5, 2010 [EBook #31511] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITCHCRAFT *** Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, Meredith Bach, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net PRIZE ESSAYS OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

A History of Witchcraft in England from by Wallace Notestein 1909 To this Essay was awarded the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize in European History for 1909 A HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT IN ENGLAND FROM 1558 TO 1718 BY WALLACE NOTESTEIN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION WASHINGTON, 1911 COPYRIGHT, 1911 BY THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION WASHINGTON, D.C. THE LORD BALTIMORE PRESS BALTIMORE, M.D., U.S.A. PREFACE.

2

In its original form this essay was the dissertation submitted for a doctorate in philosophy conferred by Yale University in 1908. When first projected it was the writer's purpose to take up the subject of English witchcraft under certain general political and social aspects. It was not long, however, before he began to feel that preliminary to such a treatment there was necessary a chronological survey of the witch trials. Those strange and tragic affairs were so closely involved with the politics, literature, and life of the seventeenth century that one is surprised to find how few of them
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The Witch-Hunt In Modern Europe Chapter Summary
    • 1702 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The Witch-Hunt In Modern Europe Chapter Summary

    THE WITCH-HUNT IN MODERN EUROPE By: Brian Levack The Witch-Hunt in Modern Europe by Brian Levack proved to be an interesting as well as insightful look at the intriguing world of the European practice of witchcraft and witch-hunts. The book offers a solid, reasonable interpretation of the accusation, prosecution, and execution for witchcraft in Europe between 1450 and 1750. Levack focuses mainly on the circumstances from which the witch-hunts emerged, as this report will examine. The causes of witch-hunting have been sometimes in publications portrayed differently from reality. The hunts were not prisoner escapee type hunts but rather a hunt that involved the identification of individuals who were believed to be engaged in a secret activity. Sometimes professional witch-hunters carried on the task,…

    • 1702 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Salem Possessed: the Social Origins of Witchcraft
    • 472 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Salem Possessed: the Social Origins of Witchcraft

    The purpose of this book was to examine the history and social life of Salem Village to try to figure out what was the cause of the events that occurred there. I believe that the authors achieved their objective at least they did to me. Boyer and Nissenbaum's explanation for the outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Salem hinges on an understanding of the economic,…

    • 472 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Comparing Evan-Pritchard's Pact With The Devil
    • 985 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Comparing Evan-Pritchard's Pact With The Devil

    Witchcraft is the root of all evil, it is an excuse for bad things going wrong to man. Evans-Pritchard learned this, first hand, living among the Azande people. The people did not try to account for situations of misfortune, instead they explained “particular conditions in a chain of causation which related an individual to natural happenings in such a way that he sustained injury” (Evans-Pritchard, 67). If someone in the village were to become ill and had received an injury prior to becoming ill, the explanation was witchcraft-it had nothing to do with the…

    • 985 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Bewitching of Anne Gunter
    • 835 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Bewitching of Anne Gunter

    Throughout the history of witchcraft it has been hard to establish if any of these accusations on ‘witches ' were actually true due to lack of records and proof, although it now seems certain that the vast majority of women incited were innocent. In the book "The Bewitching of Anne Gunter" we can see how these allegations can be completely fabricated for personal gain and revenge.…

    • 835 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Summary: The Salem Witch Trials
    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Summary: The Salem Witch Trials

    The Salem Witch Trials are known as a series of people being accused and prosecuted of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts beginning in February 1692 until May 1693. The trials began after a group of girls claimed that they were possessed by the devil. Several local women were accused of witchcraft and this began the wave of hysteria that would forever haunt Salem and leave a painful legacy for a long time to come. Nearly every major school of historians has attempted to explain the answer to the mystery of the trials, trying to understand why they occurred. From Marxists who blame class conflict, to Freudians who believe in mass hysteria, the more ecologically based historians who put the blame on hallucinogenic ergot fungus, and now more…

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Witchcraft Craze Dbq
    • 79 Words
    • 1 Page

    Witchcraft Craze Dbq

    Great job explaining your answers in great detailed. I found it very captivating how they viewed the witchcraft craze as evil and unsafe. How the people who practice it were severely punish. This was a craze that quickly spread from the big cities to the smaller towns. How it was mostly associated with women because they consider them as inferior. However, by the mid 17th century it had decrease as people became more educated and the government became stronger.…

    • 79 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    How Witches Were Misunderstood During the Elizabethan Era Essay Example
    • 1192 Words
    • 5 Pages

    How Witches Were Misunderstood During the Elizabethan Era Essay Example

    For hundreds of years, the word “witch” has been associated with innumerable negative images. Witches were considered devil worshipers who committed scores of evil deeds toward society. By the 14th Century, a law was passed outlawing any practice of witchcraft or sorcery; anyone in Europe accused of witchcraft was subject to the torture and execution. In the 1450’s there was a breakout of violent persecutions against people accused of being witches. “During this time more than 100,000 people (mostly woman) were killed for allegedly practicing witchcraft” (Kallen 33) . Witches were viewed by the public as dangerous and uncontrollable menaces to society. They were believed to have relationships with the devil, this relationship was developed because of the church demonizing the witches in the 1450’s. During this time, people lacked medical knowledge about sickness and disease. When the witches were healthy during many of these wide spread diseases, the people believed they were the ones that cursed everyone with it. The people believed that witches could curse people that they did not like. In the city, It was common for old beggars to be on the side of the street asking for change but when people refused to give the beggars coins, they would angrily curse at the passersby. If the people that the…

    • 1192 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Salem Witchcraft Trials: Mass Hysteria
    • 913 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Salem Witchcraft Trials: Mass Hysteria

    The Salem Witchcraft trials are notoriously known in history for its mass hysteria and paranoia within colonial Massachusetts during the 17th century. This paper will identify social and religious factors contributing to the Salem with-hunt, provide insight to who was behind it and why, and compare and contrast other examples of mass hysteria with that of the Salem witch-hunt.…

    • 913 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Salem Possessed Analysis
    • 774 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Salem Possessed Analysis

    Salem Possessed redefined the standard for the possibilities social history offers to understand the events and people of early America. Through a painstaking look at local records such as legal records, the Salem Village record book, the minister's book, and tax records Boyer and Nissenbaum discovered a long-standing pattern of contentious behavior of which the witchcraft accusations in 1692 was just one episode. Their analysis provides an invaluable insight into the social history of New England generally, and the factions of Salem Village that led to the tragic events of 1692, in particular.…

    • 774 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Devil in the Shape of a Woman
    • 569 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Devil in the Shape of a Woman

    The Devil in the Shape of a Woman is broken down into three sections the first section contains chapter 1 and deals with the world of New England witchcraft. It examines the beliefs and religious ideals of the settlers that shaped their views of witchcraft. The second section contains chapters 2-4 and deals with more closely with examining the characteristics and individual cases of the accused. The reader will find myriad cases of the women who were accused. Three major ideas are examined and each is given a chapter, the ideas are that demographics, economics, and personalities each played a major role in determining who was accused of being a witch. The final section contains chapters 5-7 and deals with interpreting the characteristics of witches within the gender system of Colonial New England. This is broken down by looking at Puritan beliefs about women in general, the relationship between witchcraft beliefs and the social structure of the time period, and focusing on examples of women that the Puritans thought were witches.…

    • 569 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Witchcraft: Protestantism and Catholic Church
    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Witchcraft: Protestantism and Catholic Church

    The 17th century was full of religious, political, social, and cultural conflicts that led to wars across Europe and the new world. With the rise of protestant beliefs the catholic started to lose power and, with the rise of humanism kings were losing power to people run parliaments. The social structure began to change with the humanism as well, with the rise of personal power the peasants began to feel equal to the nobles in self-worth if not yet in a monitory sense. This led to further conflict in the Catholic Church as they became more radical in the search for heretics both of this world and from hell itself.…

    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Salem Witch Trials Research Paper
    • 1204 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Salem Witch Trials Research Paper

    1692 in Salem, Massachusetts was a time of fear, allegation, and deceit. It was the time of the Salem witch trials. Family feuds, eccentric personalities, and even keeping dolls in your home were reasons for accusations. Fueled by religious fanatics and young girls screaming for attention, literally, no one was safe from the insanity of the witch-hunt. This paper is intended to discuss the causes of this hysteria, some of the trials that took place during the year 1692, and what finally stopped the madness of the witch-hunt.…

    • 1204 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    The Salem Witch Trials In 1692 Colonial America
    • 1514 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The Salem Witch Trials In 1692 Colonial America

    Salem Witch Trials Essay Here lies a point in history that is usually passed over without a second thought, but in fact there are some deep truths of society in 1692 Colonial America. With little research, one can find that in 1692 in Massachusetts, a series of charges were held against a group of dangerous witches. Every researcher looking for the truth, though, should ask this serious and important question: Were the Salem Witch Trials truly fair and just? Or were they just the over-reactions of a superstitious community to a childish prank?…

    • 1514 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Witchcraft In Colonial Virginia
    • 1153 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Witchcraft In Colonial Virginia

    battled Native Americans, disease, hunger and sometimes each other. Throughout this period, the colonists in Virginia also displayed a profound fear of witchcraft and the works of the Devil. To guard against this phenomenon, witch pots were employed just as they had been in England. In 1978, a witch pot was recovered in Virginia Beach. Unfortunately, the relic was found by an amateur collector and most of the details regarding the find have been lost due to negligence. However, the loss of information does not render the discovery invalid as it clearly displayed that colonists in Virginia were attempting to prevent witchcraft from its very beginning. The records of colonial Virginia are explicit to this need for the prevention of witchcraft.…

    • 1153 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Summary Of Robert Calef's More Wonders Of The Invisible World?
    • 1719 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Summary Of Robert Calef's More Wonders Of The Invisible World?

    The late 1600s bridged a time in the New World where religion was highly valued and superstitions, established from a previous time, ran rampant. Over several centuries ago, from the 1300s-1600s, England was experiencing its own type of witchcraft craze as it went through the process of executing thousands of people for their supposed misdeeds. After putting into place, appealing, reformatting and reenacting various acts all of which, in their own manner, banned supernatural acts and resulted in the death of many, England had finally seemed to move past this elongated obsession, just in time to pass it onto their fellow Englishmen in the New World. Due to the past exposures of hysteria and the already traumatic events occurring in the area,…

    • 1719 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More

Related Topics