It didn't matter if a person was sociable, shy, old or young. Women, and often men, could have their lives turned upside down with accusations of witchcraft. Late sixteenth and seventeenth century sources are full of accounts of spell-casting, mystic murdering and late night meetings with demons. The consequences of these allegations included social isolation, scapegoating and even death by execution. If you ever find yourself in a time machine and back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries maybe this will help. But realistically, it probably won't.
Stay away from people with health conditions
Shaking fits, aches and pains, convulsions and sudden death were all blamed on witchcraft, and spells were often said to be behind fertility or childbearing problems. In the case of a ‘bewitching’ in the Throckmorton family in the 1580s, the worried parents called for a physician who took a sample of urine from the girl showing symptoms. Aged nine, she experienced convulsions, shrieking fits and hallucinations. The doctor diagnosed intestinal worms. When the medication he sent didn’t ease these symptoms, the Elizabethan doctor stated that it must have been caused by witchcraft. People of the era had no concept of mental health issues, epilepsy or other conditions, basing diagnoses solely on the appearance of the patient and their urine. When Lady Cromwell, a woman known to the family confronted the 'witch', she began to experience aches and pains that troubled her for her last four years of life - and blamed the woman believed to be affecting the health of the Throckmorton girls.
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| Albrecht Durer, c1500 The Witch, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Public Domain |
And who have animals
Elspeth M’Ewan, in Western Scotland, was condemned on the basis that she had an ‘enchanted pin’ which she could prick cows with and steal their milk. Another neighbour complained that sometimes their hens laid more eggs on some days than others, attributing the phenomenon to Elspeth’s witchcraft. She was burned in August 1698.
Don’t argue with anyone
Joan Flower, in 1618, was found ‘threatening revenge upon the least cause of displeasure or unkindness’. She had a grudge to bear to the Earl and Countess of Rutland, who had cast out her daughter from Belvoir Castle, where she worked as a servant. Shortly afterwards, when they experienced fertility problems, deaths of their children and other illnesses, Joan was blamed as a witch. In 1634 in Reading, Berkshire, Edith Wills was also accused of witchcraft, after a man she had argued with in the market place began to experience a ‘shaking fit’ the following day.
Or even just be a bit grumpy
Joan Flower, who was accused of witchcraft in 1618 at Belvoir Castle, was described up at her trial as a ‘monstrous, malicious woman, full of oaths, curses [swearing], and irreligious imprecations; and as far as appeared, a plain atheist. Besides of late her countenance was strangely altered, and her eyes very fiery and hollow, and her speech fallen and altered, and envious, her behaviour very strange likewise, so that there were great suspicions of her being a witch’.
Don’t for goodness’ sake stumble while saying the Lord’s Prayer or reading the Bible
It was carefully noted at the execution of Agnes Samuel for witchcraft, that she paused before saying the name of God, as she ascended the ladder. To prove her own innocence at her trial, Joan Flower asked for a piece of bread and butter, swearing an oath that if she ate it, she was proven innocent by God. She choked and died.
Don’t have any bleeding pimples or other lumps on your body
Alice Samuel was executed for alleged witchcraft in the Throckmorton case in Huntngdonshire, with fits and seizures in more than a dozen people blamed on her in the 1580s and 1590s. After she was hanged, the jailer stripped off her clothes and ‘found upon the body of Alice Samuel, a little lump of flesh, like a teat, about half an inch long, which being near her private parts, they covered them, and let several people see it’. The jailer’s wife stepped up to Alice’s corpse, squeezed the lump and out came ‘yellowish milk and water… then clear water, and at last blood’. Believing it to be the site of a nipple sucked on by evil spirits, her contemporaries also noticed a bleeding spot on her chin which they thought was used for the same purpose. Today, the ‘teat’ on Alice’s groin would probably be diagnosed as an infected ingrown hair or a cyst.
And maybe don’t have an active imagination or mental illness
Many ‘witches’ of their day reported seeing shapes and shadows, or devils that would come and talk to them, suck on their body or incite them to do hurtful things. They also heard ‘voices’. Anne Baker of Leicester in 1618 spoke of different coloured planets that hovered in the air and bashed into people and caused them harm. Others described chickens speaking to them or spirits in the form of lions. In others, their visions came long after others became convinced of their guilt, so anyone with mental illness, dementia or an easily-persuaded mind might actually believe they had caused the 'witchcraft' they were accused of.
Stay away from animals
Surprisingly it was less about black cats back in the days of witch hunts and more about crows. Anne Baker spoke of a crow that pecked at her clothes and then went off to do horrid deeds. There were also tales of spirits that would come to women ‘in the form of a dog, or a cat, or a rat’, or even an owl. There were chickens that spoke and crows that tried to fly in through the window. In another example, Margaret Flower was seen with her cat, called Ruttertin, which, said an eyewitness in the trial, would ‘leap on her shoulder, and suck her neck’.
And finally, don’t confess
Alice Samuel was followed, her social standing ruined and interrogated by a group on the way to see a friend in the street. She was taken to the children who were ‘affected’ by her presence, and was scratched on her hand so violently that the young girl’s nails splintered with the force. Her hair was forcibly cut off by a local woman of status, Lady Cromwell, the wife of a knight. Handing the fistful of hair to the child's mother, Cromwell told her to burn it, to break the spell. At first, Alice visited the children to see if she could help, but she gradually retreated from public view and avoided seeing the family. After three years, the children, between fits, said that a spirit had told them that if Alice confessed, they would be cured. Their parents begged her to confess. After being asked a few times and refusing, Alice was seen to break down and cry for the state of the children. She confessed, coming up with a story about a band of spirits that harassed her. Based on this confession, she was executed.
You might also like Elspeth M'Ewan, The 'Witch' of Balmaclellan, Scotland and The Witches of Reading, Berkshire.
Source
Richard Boulton, A compleat history of magick, sorcery, and witchcraft; ... 1715: Vol 1, archive.org
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