The Last Witch of England

Abstract

JANE Wenham was the last person to be condemned to death as a witch in England. Her case in 1712 became the immediate basis for a spirited controversy. The fecund intellectual developments of the seventeenth century had prepared the way for a rational discussion of the supernatural. The Royal Society was exerting an everwidening influence. A new rationalism and scientific temper was extant in this age of Boyle and Newton. Thomas Hobbes had pointed metaphysical discussions directly to witches and their craft by attacking such beliefs.1 The Wenham trial was the match that touched off the twin powder kegs of prejudice and cynicism among interested writers. An ensuing skirmish resulted in the publication of nine pamphlets and four books, and led to the clarification of some opinions on the existence of witches. In quantity, the opinions were about equally divided. In logic there was a triumph for the opposition to superstition. The argument was climaxed by Bishop Hutchinson's epochal Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft, published in 1718: and officially sealed by the subsequent repeal of the Statute against witchcraft in 1736. Only during the period from the reign of James the First to that of George the Second was the practice of witchcraft a capital offense in England. The death penalty had been demanded by James I, himself the author of a volume on demonology, because he held the practice of witchcraft to be a greater evil than murder. His Scottish background and his difficulties in bringing Anne of Denmark to England combined to reinforce his views. Nearly two hundred alleged witches were executed during this era. In the seventeenth century, important political personages had been involved; but, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, the practice of witchcraft had passed from high fashion to the humble cottages of forlorn old women in small villages. The victims no longer moved in the highest circles of the nation, but were ignorant servant girls and farm hands. Convictions were becoming fewer as the century drew to an end. The last recorded execution of an alleged witch was in 1682.2 The last conviction and condemnation was that of Jane Wenham of Walkerne in Hertfordshire in March 1712. Her sentence was commuted by the judge 1 Prior, M. E., Joseph Glanvill, witchcraft and seventeenth century science, Modern Philology, 30 : pp. 167-93, Nov. 1932. 2 Notestein, W., History of Witchcraft in Engiand, 1558 to 1718 (New York, 19I 1) p. 325134