Witchcraft In England Research Articles

Prophecies and Parables in Elizabeth Gaskell’s “Lois the Witch”

ABSTRACT: Elizabeth Gaskell’s historical novella “Lois the Witch” (1859) employs Gothicism to depict foreign religion as abhorrent, upholding English superiority by portraying American Puritans as religious fanatics. But the story’s condemnation of the Salem witch trials shifts to readers who may also struggle to practice a rational, caring religion. Lois’ recollections of witchcraft in England enable the tale to function as a juridical parable by asking readers to evaluate and internalize tolerance toward the Puritan characters and to themselves. This study complicates the functions of both religion and the Gothic in “Lois the Witch,” which has been read through the lenses of Gaskell’s Unitarianism but not in terms of its function as a juridical parable or its use of the ambiguous supernatural. Gothicism underlines the call for tolerance, with supernaturalism neither “explained” nor “real.” Instead, the question of supernatural activities (prophecies, spells) remains ambiguous, suggesting the Puritans’ cruelty in the name of religion supersedes the issue of witchcraft.

Prophecies and Parables in Elizabeth Gaskell’s “Lois the Witch”

ABSTRACT: Elizabeth Gaskell’s historical novella “Lois the Witch” (1859) employs Gothicism to depict foreign religion as abhorrent, upholding English superiority by portraying American Puritans as religious fanatics. But the story’s condemnation of the Salem witch trials shifts to readers who may also struggle to practice a rational, caring religion. Lois’ recollections of witchcraft in England enable the tale to function as a juridical parable by asking readers to evaluate and internalize tolerance toward the Puritan characters and to themselves. This study complicates the functions of both religion and the Gothic in “Lois the Witch,” which has been read through the lenses of Gaskell’s Unitarianism but not in terms of its function as a juridical parable or its use of the ambiguous supernatural. Gothicism underlines the call for tolerance, with supernaturalism neither “explained” nor “real.” Instead, the question of supernatural activities (prophecies, spells) remains ambiguous, suggesting the Puritans’ cruelty in the name of religion supersedes the issue of witchcraft.

To Accommodate the Earthly Kingdom to Divine Will: Official and Nonconformist Definitions of Witchcraft in England (ca. 1542–1630)

ABSTRACT This article compares and contrasts England's first three Witchcraft Acts (1542, 1563, and 1604) with demonological treatises published by English theologians and clerics between 1580 and 1627 with the intention of highlighting the different ways both types of texts defined witches and their actions. This research focuses on cunning folk as healers to emphasize the disparity of interests and aims that underpinned the representation of witchcraft in civil law and religious treatises concerning that issue. I suggest that during Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, discussions about the definition of witchcraft became one of the battlefields where those who thought the English Reformation had achieved its ends and those who propelled a more thorough disciplining of the population to create a godly society collided. I argue that demonological works served, among other purposes, to express grievances about the official religious policy.

Capturing Magics:

ABSTRACT This article considers how the recent digitization of witchcraft texts, which has provided unprecedented accessibility to archives and collections, offers scholars a unique perspective—unavailable though conventional interpretive approaches—to open new inroads into the spaces of early modern witchcraft, and enable new ways of reading and interpreting old witchcraft texts. It demonstrates how the Witches in Early Modern England project (WEME), led by Kirsten C. Uszkalo, designs and deploys strategically intersecting, innovative, and experimental digital tools to allow for robust searching and pattern finding within references from 290 texts, providing entries on approximately 150 years of English witchcraft published between 1550 and 1700. The article identifies some of the recurring patterns in the micro-histories of witchcraft in England as expressed in and discovered through WEME, and outlines the technologies that allow users to search a time line, map, search box, or filter in order to explore almost three thousand individual multidimensional nano-histories and align them, to create composites of the true and terrible stories of the early English witches. Moreover, the project's open-ended platform encourages further expansion by users, offering the opportunity to develop search tools that can enhance and inspire the academic interrogation of existing corpora.

Early Modern

A Provincial Elite in Early Modern Tuscany: Family and Power in the Creation of the State. By Giovanna Benadusi Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500–1800. By Anthony Pagden Country House Brewing in England, 1500–1900. By Pamela Sambrook John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland 1505–1553. By David Loades Fear in Early Modern Society. Edited by William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England, 1550–1750. By James Sharpe The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics. By Blair Worden Law, Order and Government in Caernarfonshire, 1558–1640: Justices of the Peace and the Gentry. By J. Gwynfor Jones The Making of the French Episcopate, 1589–1661. By Joseph Bergin Spanish Naval Power, 1589–1665: Reconstruction and Defeat. By David Goodman Cathedrals under Siege: Cathedrals in English Society, 1600–1700. By Stanford E. Lehmberg The Independent Highland Companies 1603–1760. By Peter Simpson The Sultan's Seraglio: An Intimate Portrait of Life at the Ottoman Court. By Ottavio Bon (from the Seventeenth‐century Edition of Robert Withers). Introduced and annotated by Godfrey Goodwin Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c.1640–1649. By David L. Smith The Lancashire Cotton Industry: A History since 1700. Edited by Mary B. Rose Habsburgs and Ottomans between Vienna and Belgrade (1683–1739). By Ivan Parvev Women and Work in Eighteenth‐century Edinburgh. By Elizabeth C. Sanderson The Decade of the United Irishmen: Contemporary Accounts 1791–1801. Edited by John Killen The Engraved Record of the Jacobite Movement. By Richard Sharp

The Context of Witchcraft: The Case of Jane Wenham (1712)

THE LAST PERSON to suffer death for the crime of witchcraft in England was hanged in 1684, and although records are not complete, there seem to have been no guilty verdicts for nearly three decades after that, until the case of Jane Wenham, an old woman of Walkern, Hertfordshire, in March 1712. Not only did this case cause tremendous excitement in the immediate area, it also provoked an extensive pamphlet controversy that debated not just the facts, but such varied issues as the accuracy of biblical translations, contemporary increase in atheism, principles of scientific evidence and the conduct of valid experiments, questions of religious freedom, medical concepts of hysteria, and the function of ministers of the Church of England. Many of these issues were especially pertinent in the climate of religious and political tension that was the aftermath of the Sacheverell affair in 1710. Those involved in the trial were not just superstitious and illiterate villagers; among the prosecution witnesses were two local clergymen, the wife of one, and the son and grandson of the well-known antiquarian and historian of Hertfordshire, Sir Henry Chauncy. The judge of the trial, Sir John Powell, is said to have taken the case to Queen Anne personally and obtained a pardon. How did the case arise, and why did it make such a furor? This paper attempts to explore the context of the Jane Wenham case, the last trial for witchcraft in England, by looking at the social structure of the village, the individuals involved, the pamphlets on

Witchcraft in England

Witchcraft in England

Witchcraft in England

Witchcraft in England

Witchcraft in England

THIS is an industrious and careful study of the voluminous records of various kinds of witchcraft and kindred practices, some of which survive to-day. The bibliography would have been more useful if dates of publication had been given throughout. The preliminary chapter on the "Art of Magic" follows Sir James Frazer's view that magic is "probably older than religion"; but doubt is cast on Miss Margaret Murray's belief in a "Witch Cult in Western Europe" transmitted from pagan times, though many rites and beliefs are of pre-Christian origin. The various forms of harmful magic are classified and illustrated in detail, with the ingenious and horrible methods of detecting witches within historic times, and the comparatively harmless practices of the ‘white witch’, which have survived the repeal of the statute against witchcraft in 1736 and the spasmodic panics, here and there, of later date.

Book Review: Witchcraft in England

Book Review: Witchcraft in England

Sir Matthew Hale and Witchcraft

The scepticism of Mr. Justice Powell, expressed at and after the trial before him at Hereford, March 4, 1712, of Jane Wenham of Walkerne for Witchcraft (which was the last trial and conviction for Witchcraft in England) excited the greatest indignation of many good people in England, who honestly believed that the authority of Scripture and the very foundations of religion itself were being undermined by the Sadducism of the Judge and those who thought as he didparticularly when she was not executed after being convicted.

Reviews : Notestein, W. A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718. Pp. xiv, 442. Price $1.50. Washington: American Historical Association, 1911

Reviews : Notestein, W. A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718. Pp. xiv, 442. Price $1.50. Washington: American Historical Association, 1911

<italic>A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718</italic>. By <sc>Wallace Notestein</sc>, Assistant Professor of History, University of Minnesota. (Washington: American Historical Association. 1911. Pp. xi, 442.)

Journal Article A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718. By Wallace Notestein, Assistant Professor of History, University of Minnesota. (Washington: American Historical Association. 1911. Pp. xi, 442.) Get access A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718. By Notestein Wallace, Assistant Professor of History, University of Minnesota. (Washington: American Historical Association. 1911. Pp. xi, 442.) G. F. B. G. F. B. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 18, Issue 1, October 1912, Pages 129–130, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/18.1.129 Published: 01 October 1912

A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718

A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718

A Literary Link between Thomas Shadwell and Christian Felix Weisse

Witchcraft in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a subject upon which the dramatists from Marlowe to Shadwell seized with the greatest avidity. There was material of the most pliable sort; it could be moulded into a magnificent tragedy or distorted into the wildest buffoonery. In the sixteenth century it was the darker side of magic which we find in the drama, and though we note as early as 1604 the effort to brighten up Marlowe's tragedy of Doctor Faustus by the introduction of broadly comic scenes taken from the prose tale, yet one can well believe that the theatre audiences from 1590 to 1610 remembered too vividly the cruelties of the witch trials in 1590 to appreciate the buffoonery of Ralph in the comic scenes as deeply as they felt the dark despair of the protagonist Faustus.

Witchcraft in England

Witchcraft in England

Witchcraft in England

Witchcraft in England Get access John Pickford, M.A. John Pickford, M.A. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s6-X, Issue 243, 23 August 1884, Page 158, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s6-X.243.158d Published: 23 August 1884