Witchcraft and Vagrancy Acts, E. P. Hewitt, Esq., K.C., in a very valuable paper[1] says: “Sir Matthew Hale in 1664 had before him at Bury St. Edmunds two women charged with witchcraft—they were convicted and burned. And a few years later, eighteen persons were burned at S. Osyth in Essex, for the same offence.” This is incorrect, and contemporary records might be cited in both instances to show that these persons were hanged. For convenience sake I will only refer to Bishop Francis Hutchinson’s Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft,[2] where he notes (p. 54) under the year 1664: “Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, try’d before the Lord Chief Baron Hale, at Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, and were hanged, maintaining their Einocence.” In chapter viii he gives a very detailed account of this case.
The prosecutions at S. Osyth were not “a few years later” but eighty-two years before, in 1582, and although it is doubtful how many persons were executed, it is certain that they were hanged.[3]
Miss M. A. Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe,[4] writes in an off-hand way: “The belief that the witch must be burned and the ashes scattered was so engraved in the popular mind that, when the severity of the laws began to relax, remonstrances were made by or to the authorities.”
- ↑ The Solicitor’s Journal, June 25th, 1927, pp. 503–4.
- ↑ The Second Edition, 1720.
- ↑ It is generally believed that twelve or thirteen suffered, but Reginald Scot raises the number to seventeen or eighteen. It may be noted that Mr. Hewitt concludes his article by saying: “In 1895 one Bridget Cleary was burned as a witch in County Tipperary.” Surely so unqualified a statement is very misleading. The terrible Baltyvadhen tragedy was that of a poor woman who was placed on the kitchen fire by her own family and burned to death, not on account of any supposed witchcraft, but in the belief that the real wife had been stolen and that she was a changeling substituted by the fairies, who when their clurichaune was subjected to the ordeal of fire would snatch it away and restore the stolen wife safe and sound.
- ↑ P. 161.
