ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on witches as a group which inspired fear and anxiety amongst those affected by witchcraft. By the mid-1640s, during the Matthew Hopkins era of trials, the idea of witchcraft as a conspiracy appears frequently. Witchcraft as conspiracy was portrayed in print in three main ways: witches acting together to hurt their neighbours; witches working together as part of a hierarchical society; and witches attending witches' sabbaths. References to conspiratorial witchcraft continued to evolve long after Potts' pamphlet. Another early seventeenth-century pamphlet also presents a distinctly English belief in the concept of conspiratorial witchcraft and the witches' sabbath. The almost two-hundred-page pamphlet includes what is often referred to as the first sabbath in England. The only idea new to English popular pamphlets in Hopkins' description of the sabbath is that of 'sacrifices' to the Devil. Witches and sabbath-like meetings are seen as the norm.
