ABSTRACT
During the past few years I have been engaged in a study of some ofthe primitive beliefs that were current in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century England. My sole qualifications are the relatively narrow ones of the conventional academic historian, and my knowledge of social anthropology is only that of the amateur. Nevertheless, I have become convinced that many of the insights of the social anthropologist can be profitably applied to the study of history, and that this is nowhere more so than in the case of the history of witchcraft - a topic which most historians regard as peripheral, not to say bizarre, but which has always been central to the British anthropological tradition. The parallels between African and European witchcraft have often been noticed, but they have not, so far as I know, yet received any systematic examination. My aim in this paper, therefore, will be to examine some of the basic features of English witchcraft beliefs and accusations in the light of anthropological studies of witchcraft elsewhere. For this reason my approach will be primarily sociological, and I shall have to omit any consideration of intellectual or psychological aspects of the subject. Any fully satisfying explanation of English witchcraft, would, of course, have to take account of them as well. But here I shall merely try to indicate, as candidly as I can, the points at which the historian can learn from the social anthropologist, as well as those at which he is liable to find him disappointingly unhelpful. In the process I shall also attempt to sketch out an interpretation of English witchcraft beliefs which I plan to develop more fully elsewhere. My substantial indebtedness to the long flow of anthropological studies of
DEFINITIONS
The term 'witchcraft' was used loosely in Tudor and Stuart England, and was at one time or another applied to virtually every kind of magical activity or ritual operation that worked by occult methods. Village diviners who foretold the future or who tracked down lost property were often called 'witches'; so were the 'wise women' who healed the sick by charms or prayers. Contemporary scientists whose operations baffled the ignorant were sometimes suspected of witchcraft, while the label was readily attached by Protestant polemicists to the ritual operations of the Catholic Church. Theologians invariably distrusted any claims to supernatural activity which their own religion did not authorize; a conjuror who invoked spirits to gain occult knowledge was a 'witch' so far as they were concerned, however innocent his own intentions.
