Witchcraft Trials and Demonic Possession in Early Modern Ireland

Abstract

If the checks and balances described in the last chapter kept prosecution rates for witchcraft low in Protestant Ireland, while fear of malefic witches remained part of popular culture, there were nonetheless occasions when they failed to operate. Using cases identified by Seymour in Irish Witchcraft and Demonology (Dublin, 1913), Elwen Lapoint argued that in early modern Ireland women were prosecuted for witchcraft on nine occasions, which resulted in three executions.1 These calculations require adjustment, as Seymour actually detailed six trials and five executions in his book: Dame Alice Kyteler and associates, Kilkenny, 1324 (execution of Petronella de Midia); ‘two witches’, Kilkenny, 1578 (both executed); Anglican minister, John Aston of Mellifont, Co. Louth, 1606; Florence Newton, 1661 (executed); anonymous witch, Antrim, 1698 (executed); and eight women at Islandmagee in 1711.2 Seymour’s calculations, however, also require re-evaluation as he excluded the conviction of Marion Fisher in 1655, and the Kyteler case was a sorcerycum-treason trial and occurred in the medieval rather than in the early modern period. Similarly, the two Kilkenny witches were tried in 1578 before witchcraft was a secular crime in Ireland, and Aston was prosecuted not for witchcraft but for popular magic.3 Furthermore, as was established in the previous chapter, the 1698 execution was an instance of popular summary justice rather than a witchcraft trial and, as we shall see in this chapter, the Islandmagee witchcraft case engendered two separate trials.