Published:
April 16, 2021 at 2:51 pm
The history of witchcraft in Britain is a dark one, brimming with trials, persecution and torture, which claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent men and women during the 16th and 17th centuries. But what did you actually have to do to end up in the dock, accused of devil worship and crimes of witchcraft? Very little, as the following eight questions, compiled with the help of Owen Davies, professor of social history at the University of Hertfordshire, reveal…
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Are you female?
Although around 80 per cent of those tried for witchcraft in Britain were women, men also suffered at the hands of so-called witch hunters, too. In 1863, an elderly man from Sible Hedingham, Essex, was accused of bewitching the wife of the local beerhouse owner. Using the more informal type of trial of ‘swimming’ the accused to prove their guilt, the villagers threw the man into a nearby brook. If he sank, he was deemed innocent; if he floa