ABSTRACT
The first English Statute concerning witchcraft was enacted in 1542.1 The position before that date is not altogether clear. Although Britton and Fleta declared that ‘an inquiry about sorcerers is one of the articles of the sheriff’s turn’,2 most authorities suggest that witchcraft was treated as a branch of heresy, an ecclesiastical offence which was later punished by the State under the writ de haeretico comburendo.3 The general impresssion is that prosecutions were scarce before 1542.4 In 1547 all the new Henrician Statutes were repealed, including that of 1542 concerning witchcraft. Until the passage of a new Statute in 1563 the legal situation reverted to its pre1542 state. Bishop Grindal in 1561 wrote to William Cecil asking for punishment of a magician because ‘My Lord Cheif Justice sayeth the temporal law will not meddle with them’.5 Meanwhile, the Queen’s Attorney had to send some London conjurers to the Bishop for punishment.6 Yet, despite the absence of any relevant Statute, two people are known to have been accused of witchcraft at the Essex Assizes in 1560.7
In March 1563 an ‘Act agaynst Conjuracions Inchantments and Witchecraftes’ was passed. This was repealed by a more severe Act in 1604. The Act of 1604 continued in force until 1736.8 An important factor in encouraging the 1563 Statute was the concern of the Government at the amount of contemporary treasonable activity which took the form of false prophecies, astrological predictions, and other amateur conjuring.9 The increased harshness of the Statute in 1604, when it was redrafted by Sir Edward Coke and others, was, at the most, only partly the result of James I’s interest in the subject.10
