Witchcraft Accusations in Early Modern Ireland

Abstract

When the last witchcraft trial was held at Leicester, England, in 1717,1 around 500 people, mainly women, had been executed during the previous 150 years. This figure represents just over 1% of the estimated 40,000 people put to death for witchcraft in Europe between 1400 and 1800, a period when England held 5% of the total European population.2 Taking into consideration that early modern Scotland held roughly a quarter of the population of England, Scottish witch-hunting was 12 times more intense: of the 3,837 people tried for witchcraft, around two-thirds were convicted and executed.3 Put another way, and if we take historian Julian Goodare’s slightly higher figure of 2,500 executions, Scottish witch-hunting was five times more intense than the European average.4 Recent academic studies suggest that prosecution and execution rates in Ireland failed to reach double figures.5