Further evidence of this general decline in the number of trials can be seen on graphs 1 and 2, which show the fluctuations in the numbers of accused witches in the Essex Assize records and the ecclesiastical courts of Essex. Using the records from only one county may be inaccurate, but I am limited by time for this paper, and limited by the number of sources that are readily available which deal with the witchcraft trials of England in terms of quantitative analysis. However, it may be argued that Essex is representative of the English trials overall for the following reasons:
1) The trial that is considered England's first witch trial took place within the borders of Essex in 1565.
2) Essex is supposed to have suffered from the worst of all witch manias in England at the town of St. Osyth's.
3) The last of England's recorded witch hunts took place in Essex in 1699.

These graphs clearly show that the worst periods took place during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and then declined after the 1590's.

Additionally, graph #1 shows that not only were there no increases in the number of accusations upon the publishing of Demonologie, but rather, there was a decrease each time it was published. Also, it shows decreases coinciding with the crowning of James in 1603, and with the enactment of the witch statute of 1604. It must be admitted that there are two periods in the reign of James for which no Assize records survive. But, both of these follow years of decline. Even without that fact, the lack of records certainly would not support an argument that the revised law and Daemonologie increased the number of accusations.

Graph #2 also shows a drop in the number of cases through James' reign. There is one exception here that is significant however. In 1605 there is a sharp increase in the number of cases. They rise to a total of twelve after two years with only one case per year. This occurs just after the enactment of the witch statute in 1604, and may well have been caused by the law. The ratifying of a new law could have brought about a greater fear among the people if the government was seen to believe witchcraft was a severe enough crime to warrant a death sentence. However, this rise is made less significant by two facts:
1) It only lasts for that one year and therefore is not enough to support the accusations made against James.
2) The statute of 1604 was a secular law and thus, these additional trials at the ecclesiastical courts would not have been covered by the revised law. Going along with this point, the sharp decline in ecclesiastical court cases on witchcraft after 1605 may well be the result of a recognition that crimes connected with witchcraft were more properly a secular matter under the 1604 law.

There are two more points to be made in defense of James in relation to the statute of 1604. The law was not as severe as some authors have suggested, and James cannot be blamed for revising the law. Certainly the law was more severe than Elizabeth's since it called for a death sentence for more cases than did Elizabeth's law. Plus, it does seem to have increased the percentage of persons who were executed on witchcraft charges (see Table #3, p.21). But, de facto, it probably made little difference since large numbers of people died of "gaol fever" while they were imprisoned. George Kittredge suggests that "under such conditions, the change from life sentence to hanging was rather mercy than rigor."²⁵

As to whether James can be blamed for the statute at all, it is certain at least that he did not write it. It was not really a new law. For the most part it follows the Elizabethan statute word for word.²⁶

--- What is more, Kittredge argues that it was not James who fathered the bill. During the last years of Elizabeth's reign there was an intense number of prosecutions and a great deal of public excitement on the subject. It is not with popular opinion that Kittredge deals with however, but rather that of the better-educated classes. He presents examples of several distinguished persons who favoured stricter witchcraft laws. The first was William Perkins, Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, who died in 1602. Before his death he had written a Discourse on the Damned Art of Witchcraft which was published posthumously. He wrote that "all witches being thoroughly convicted by the Magistrate, should be put to death." Here is a man who lived in Elizabethan England who was calling for just what was enacted by the 1604 law.

Next is George Giffard of Oxford. He published a tract on witchcraft in 1593, and was an eminent preacher of Malldon, Essex. His point of view can be clearly seen in the dialogue of his book:

"Dan. A witch by the word of God ought to die the death, not because she killeth men, for that she cannot (unless it be those witches that kill by poyson, which either she receive from the devil, or he teacheth them to make) but because she dealeth with devils...
M.B. If they finde them guiltie to have dealt with devils and cannot say they have murdered men, the law doth not put them to death.
Dan. It were to be wished, that the law were more perfect in that respect, even to cut off all such abominations.²⁷

Here are but two of the four men that Kittredge presents as learned men of the period, each calling for more strident laws concerning witches.

This is not the last of the evidence. On the second of April, 1604, in the House of Lords the old act "having been considered of by the Committees, and the same by them found to be imperfect, the said committees thought meet to frame a new Bill instead thereof, bearing the same Title, which new Bill (together with the former) was brought into the House by the Earl of Northumberland."²⁸About one month later, the revised bill was sent with its amendments to the House of Commons. It was referred to a committee of sixteen men. Some of these names are of some interest: Sir Edward Montague, Mr. Throckmorton, Sir Thomas Ridgeway. ²⁹ Sir Edward Montague, Kittredge points out, along with his son was a patron of a Thomas Cooper, the author of an anti-witchcraft book. Mr. Throckmorton was apparently related to the Throckmorton family of Huntingdonshire, the victoms of the witch accused in the Warboys trial of 1593. Sir Thomas Ridgeway just happens to have been the justice of the peace who was presented with the testimonies against the Trevisard family which were discussed at the beginning of this paper.³⁰

Furthermore, two other members of the House of Commons at the time the bill was passed had a relative who had been supposedly killed by the defendant of the Warboys trial Sirs Oliver and Henry Cromwell.³¹ Their mother, Lady Cromwell had died under mysterious circumstances, and Agnes Samuel was convicted and hanged for her murder by witchcraft.

None of these men can have needed tutoring in the ideas of witchcraft. Surely they needed little influence to persuade them to vote for the revised law. Finally, to quote Kittredge one last time on this point: "It was not a king's bill, nor was it rushed through the under royal whip and spur, or passed out of compliance to a new sovereign. There is no evidence that the king took any particular interest in the act. It reflected the concientious opinions of both houses of Parliament," and it reflected the opinions of the learned men of the period.³²

The witch craze of 1645 is the major exception to the general decline in the number of witch trials during the seventeenth century. It was during this time that the infamous and self-proclaimed "Witch-finder" General Matthew Hopkins plied his trade through the English countryside. The trials of this period have been described as unique for more than just their unusually high number. The trials were described in greater detail than any of the previous trials and therefore the social tensions behind the accusations are easier to reconstruct. The 1645 trials were the first for which a professional witch-finder was employed, and it was the first time torture was used to any great extent.

In Essex at this time thirty-six women were imprisoned or tried at the Essex Assizes. Nineteen of these were apparently executed, nine died of gaol fever, six were still in prison as of 1648, and only one was acquited.³³ An additional woman was released after serving as the crown's chief witness. Furthermore, the percentage of those accused who were executed was abnormally high, and the geographic concentration of the suspects was more dense than normal - thirty-five of the suspects having all come from within fifteen miles of the village of Manningtree.

The most common explanation for the 1645 out-burst is that they were stirred up by Matthew Hopkins and his helper John Stearne, their motive being greed. They were certainly paid for their work but there is no real evidence that they started their business as a money-making proposition. Also, there is little to show that Hopkins was a religious fanatic, as their attacks included clergymen, and faithful, church-attending laity, and their opponents included Puritan extremists. According to Alan Macfarlane "the real spur of their activity, at least in Essex, seems much more prosaic. It seems to have been a combination of curiosity bewilderment and anxiety, with a desire to exercise power and perform a useful public duty."³⁵ This is the impression that he gains from the reading of the pamphlet dating from the trials and other accounts.

Hopkins and Stearne, of course could not have succeeded without some popular support. Indeed, they served as witnesses against suspects from only four of the twelve villages involved in Essex. In Manningtree over twenty people were witnesses against the six most notorious witches, and one suspect was apparently accused independently of the other suspects and witnesses Thus, with a minimized influence by Hopkins and Stearne we are left with the question of what was the reason for the exceptional persecutions of 1645? Macfarlane suggests that there was a web of reasons contributing to the outbreak: "Especially the disruption of local government and justice by the Civil War and, possibly, the economic, spiritual and other tensions just below the surface (of the society) were no less wide spread than they had been during the sixteenth century," - the period of the Elizabethan trials. ³⁶

There are numerous reasons which have been presented to explain the rise of the witchcraft mania during Elizabethan England, and its subsequent decline during the seventeenth century. First, is the changes in in the legal treatment of witchcraft. It can be argued that without the Elizabethan statute of 1563 there would have been considerably fewer prosecutions of witches. This is certainly true. But, the creation of a law cannot by itself generate a belief in the subject of that law. The laws of Elizabeth and James certainly provided a means for presecuting witches that was indispensable. However, this simply means that the laws were necessary for the trials to happen, but in no way were the laws sufficient to cause the trials. Further, the addition of new laws cannot explain the decline of witch trials.

The intellectual framework upon which the witchcraftbeliefs were based provides another argument. An assumption of the belief in witchcraft is the belief in maleficium, the belief that one can be harmed through non-physical means. However, as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries progressed, the combination of a market economy, greater social mobility, a less collectivist religion, and a growing separation of people as a result of institutional rather than person bonds could have a large effect on beliefs. That a neighborts malice can indeed cause physical harm may be an assumption that is based in the experience of a subsistance-level village where cooperation is a necessity. But with social changes and a gentry which was becoming more educated, the juries (made up from the gentry) may not have felt as intimately tied to their neighbors, and feared less than ill-will could engender harm. People may have been growing far enough apart and independently enough that they were able to hate each other without side-effects on a mystical plane. This is an interesting argument, and perhaps a plausable one. But, for proof it would require investigating attitudes and feelings of people towards one another. Data about such subjects can most often only be inferred. So, unless evidence for this theory can be gleened from the surviving primitive cultures in the world, it is unlikely that this theory could be proven. Thus, it will probably remain merely a consideration among the multiple causes of the witch mania.

It has also been suggested that the witch trials are related to the physical suffering of a society in terms of illness. This explanation can be passed over quickly by making several points:
1) Illness or death is involved in only some of the accusations.
2) It does not seem that there was any decline in disease after about 1650, or an increase for the period prior to that.
3) There is no evidence that medical knowledge deteriorated just before or during the period of the witch trials, and the revolution in medical knowledge occurred in the nineteenth century, much too late to account for the decline. Furthermore, knowledge of what an illness is can coexist with a belief that there is a supernatural reason why a specific person came down with the disease. Therefore, even if there had been an improvement in medical knowledge, this alone would not have accounted for the decline in the number of witch trials.

In his book Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, Alan Macfarlane presents an interesting explanation which considers the social and economic changes during the period of the witch trials. In general, the accused witch was of a lower economic standing than her neighbors, and of an age older than the mean. Thus there are two factors which may be significant to the rise and decline of the witch trials: age and poverty.

Macfarlane suggests that the changes significant to our question are twofold:

"Firstly, it seems that population growth and changes in land ownership created a group of poorer villagers whose ties to their slightly wealthier neighbors became more tenuous. People increasingly had to decide whether to invest their wealth in maintaining the old at a decent standard of living, or improvements which would keep them abreast of their yeoman neighbors. Secondly it seems that there were two stages in response to such changes. During the period between 1560 and about 1650, the formal institutions which had dealt with the old and poor, church relief, the manorial organization, and neighborly and kinship ties were strained. This was the period of witchcraft accusation. People still felt enjoined to help and support each other, while also feeling the necessity to invest their capital in buying land and providing for their children. The very poor were not the problem. They could be whipped and sent away, or hired as laborers. It was the slightly less affluent neighbors or kin who only demanded a little help who became an increasing source of anxiety. To refuse them was to break a whole web of long-held ties."³⁷

The breaking of this web would certainly cause some guilt on the part of the better-off person, and resentment from the person asking for help. This idea is supported by the records of many of the trials. If we recall the accusations against the Trevisard family, Alice Beere was bewitched for refusing to lend out a hatchet Further Alice Trevisard was also accused of bewitching two people after they demanded payment on debts that she owed. Economic tensions, therefore, seems to be exhibited by the motives ascribed to the witches.

Two changes which came about during the seventeenth century may have relieved this tension between neighbors. First, changes in population and price trends, may have lessened the plight of the aged and the less well-to-do. Second, and in Macfarlane's view more important, is a change from informal charity to formal ways of dealing with the needy. The establishment of workhouses, and rules laid down for the purpose of helping the poor could have lessened the anxieties of the villagers who had to choose between the priorities of trying to get ahead in the world, and helping his fellow villager. The velief in witchcraft of course remained, but the tensions would have been eased and there would be fewer accusations. Macfarlane admits that this theory is still at a very tentative stage. Each of his assertions will need qualification, and documentation. But he seems to have an argument that may be viable, and certainly no worse than those which have preceded him. Thus, in this stage of the historical game all we can do is agree with his statement that only by looking at the witchcraft prosecutions "in the total intellectual background of sixteenth and seventeenth century England will a solution be found to the problem of why the arose and declined."³⁸

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Bibliography