The Witch Tests

As we approach the Witch Trials Season we wanted to share with you the methods use by the persecutors.

It’s a reminder of what happens with intolerance and ignorance.

A Ducking Stool was a medieval torture device which was primarily used to punish and humiliate women. 

The contraption resembled a seesaw with a chair affixed to one end. 

The device was placed along the edge of a river and the offender, who would be strapped into the chair, was repeatedly plunged into the cold river water. 

Witch hunters would use the device to coerce confessions from the accused. 

This method was later simplified - accusers forwent the device and just tossed suspected witches into the water to see if they would drown.

The ultimate no-win situation, some accused witches had their hands and feet bound along with rocks to weigh them down, and then they were thrown into a body of water. 

It was believed that if a person was a witch, the water would spit them out.

However, if they were innocent, they would drown. 

Knowing that their death would clear them of all charges must have been a great source of comfort.  

When we say the accused were "pressed," we don’t only mean for answers. This method was used to manipulate accused witches into admitting their guilt.

 The witches in question had a board laid on top of them and their accusers placed heavy rocks on the board until they either confessed or they were literally crushed to death. 

Medieval wisdom held that witches were incapable of speaking scripture aloud, so accused sorcerers were made to recite selections from the Bible—usually the Lord’s Prayer—without making mistakes or omissions.

While it may have simply been a sign that the suspected witch was illiterate or nervous, any errors were viewed as proof that the speaker was in league with the devil. 

This twisted test of public speaking ability was commonly used as hard evidence in witch trials. In 1712, it was applied in the case Jane Wenham, an accused witch who supposedly struggled to speak the words “forgive us our trespasses” and “lead us not into temptation” during her interrogation. 

Still, even a successful prayer test didn’t guarantee an acquittal. 

During the Salem Witch Trials, the accused sorcerer George Burroughs flawlessly recited the prayer from the gallows just before his execution. 

The performance was dismissed as a devil’s trick, and the hanging proceeded as planned.

June 1, 1563: Witchcraft Laws Go Into Effect In England

England’s Witchcraft Laws were put into effect. 

These laws were put into effect on June 1, 1563, and made the practice of witchcraft illegal and outlawed all witchcraft-related activities. 

It was called An Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts. 

The law was not the first in English history against the practice of witchcraft. In 1401, witchcraft was legally recognized as heresy against the church and government, but it was not technically punishable by death, although killing witches did happen.

Henry VIII passed an act in 1542 that defined witchcraft as a felony punishable by death for the first time. 

The felon’s property, goods, etc., were also forfeited to the crown upon conviction for witchcraft and you can see how ulterior motives would arise from the nature of the law. Edward VI repealed the law in 1547.

If you were living in England on June 1, 1563, the Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts would officially be in effect. 

If you were convicted of practicing witchcraft, you served time in prison. 

If the conviction had the death or destruction of another person attached to it, you were put to death without clergy to take confession, give absolution, or administer last rites.

James I added to the Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts in 1604 to make invocation or communication with spirits a felony punishable by death as well.

Being burned at the stake was actually not very common in Elizabeth I’s and James I’s reigns. 

Only those who committed heresy or treason were burned, and because witchcraft was turned into a felony, the cases moved to common courts and convicted individuals were hanged.

George II changed the law again in 1736 to say that anyone who “pretended” to conjure spirits, tell the future, etc., was a con artist. 

Punishments for con artists were fines and prison time. 

It’s important to note the language of these changes because it shifts the perception of witchcraft in the judicial system from something very real and dangerous to something not so real and less dangerous.

A witch under the law was no longer making deals with the devil but in fact knowingly conning people around them. 

It shows a shift in society around the Enlightenment.

Despite witchcraft technically being illegal in England until 1951 (yes, the 20th century), people were no longer routinely put to death by the mid-1700s. 

Helen Duncan was the last person to do time in prison under George II’s 1736 witchcraft laws. 

She spent nine months in prison for being a clairvoyant, and then she was arrested again in 1956 after the 1951 Fraudulent Mediums Act, which was later repealed in 2008.