ABSTRACT
In English witchcraft cases, Keith Thomas has noted, “[t]he most common situation of all was that in which the victim…had been guilty of a breach of neighborliness, by turning away old women who had come to the door to beg or borrow some food or drink, or the loan of some household utensil.”1 A major element of the explanatory scheme for witchcraft accusations developed by Alan Macfarlane and by Thomas is that the failure to provide charity to their needy neighbors aroused hurtful and contradictory feelings in the minds of those who had turned their backs. These people were trapped between the emergent ethos of capitalist self-interest and the powerful religious impulse of concern for those less fortunate than themselves. On one hand, householders who now paid a regular poor rate did not expect to answer the beggar’s knock at the door.2 On the other hand, they were keenly aware of the injunction of Proverbs xxviii: 27: “He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack: but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse.”3 Beleaguered emotionally, they sought to cleanse their conscience by indicting the almsseekers as unworthy and malevolent, as servants of the devil rather than as deserving children of God.
