Considering its importance in the history of the English witchcraft trials it is surprising that there has not been more work on the Witchcraft Act of 1604. The contributions to this volume thus fill a gap in English witchcraft studies. Though all of the essays are worth reading, I will focus in my review on those of particular interest to folklorists.
After a general introduction by John Newton, the book is divided into three sections, “The New King and the Crucible of the Act,” “England under the Act,” and “The Passing of the Act.” The first section, as the title suggests, focuses on King James and the initial passing of the act. In the first essay of this section, “King James’s Experience of Witches, and the 1604 Act,” P. G. Maxwell-Stuart looks at James’ relationship with witchcraft in both Scotland and later in England. James had been involved closely in one witchcraft incident, the North Berwick affair of 1590, in which several people close to the king were apparently involved in a plot to assassinate him by magical means. As Maxwell-Stuart notes (36) “one result of this experience was James’s decision to write a short treatise based on what he had discovered.” James’ Daemonologie is one of the best known of the sixteenth-century witchcraft manuals, and has often served to mark him as a fanatical believer in the reality of witchcraft. But, as Maxwell-Stuart shows, the truth was more complicated. By the time James reached England he had lost the fervency of belief showcased in Daemonologie. Maxwell-Stuart writes (45), “as for the effect of the new Act itself on James himself, it appears to have done nothing to stimulate him into pressing for more prosecutions or intensified rooting out of witches. Indeed, we can actually see the King [at this time] leaning towards the opinion that several of the cases brought into court were impostures rather than genuine instances of witchcraft.” This shift in James’ attitude is apparent in other contexts as well. Clive Holmes notes in his contribution, “Witchcraft and Possession at the Accession of James I: The Publication of Samuel Harsnett’s Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures”: “The overall trajectory of James’s intellectual interest and involvement in witchcraft is clear. The energetic, vicious witch-hunter of 1590–91 became increasingly suspicious of witchcraft accusation, particularly those emanating from the victims of possession” (86). Though James’ position on witchcraft forms an important point of reference for the essays in the first section, the essays are also to be appreciated for their close analyses of specific works about witchcraft, and especially those by Holmes and Tom Webster, “(Re)Possession of Dispossession: John Darrell and Diabolical Discourse,” which also examines Harsnett’s work. Both of these essays recount arguments about, and occurrences of, witchcraft in the period, as well as subject both period witchcraft writings and modern responses to critical examination. The political, religious, and intellectual battles of the time were very important (when, indeed, they can really be differentiated), with, for instance, the claims by Catholics at success in exorcisms being strongly rebuked by Protestant writers, or those of Puritans attacked by Anglicans. Though the belief in witchcraft and other supernatural beings and supernatural events was very strong, the nature of these things was constantly disputed—writers argued over such questions as whether or not the accusers were to be believed or whether witchcraft was a reality or a delusion, among others—as well as the efficacy of any particular group in dealing with them.
In the second part of the book the essays by Marion Gibson, Jo Bath, and Malcolm Gaskill will be of special interest to folklorists. Marion Gibson’s essay, “Applying the Act of 1604: Witches in Essex, Northhamptonshire and Lancashire,” opens by asking the question “what actual differences were made to legal and cultural practice by the alterations of the definitions, and penalties for, witchcraft introduced in the new Act of 1604?” (115). After an examination of the witchcraft pamphlets that circulated in these three counties, she finds that the Act seems to have had little effect. Gibson’s conclusion is similar to Jo Bath’s in her “The Treatment of Potential Witches in North-East England, c. 1649–1680.” As Bath writes, “The records available reveal much about the multiplicity of ways in which people interacted with and combated witches, and one thing that is clear is that they did so largely without reference to the legal position [of the Act of 1604].” The responses people had to witches and witchcraft would thus appear to have been derived from folk law and custom, not the official statutes. Malcolm Gaskill’s essay, “Witchcraft, Emotion and Imagination in the English Civil War,” closes this section of the book. Gaskill “uses four categories of the personal and the quotidian…: relationships in neighborhoods and households; poverty and work; sexual desire and guilt; and salvation, damnation and despair” (167) to examine witches and witchcraft confessions. By studying confessions within this matrix Gaskill looks to “detect not just sound and movement, but internal representations of an external social and political world” (174). “This is,” he continues, “a plea for historians to turn up the volume on the voices of the past, not just to enhance our sense of their vital activity, but to appreciate how their minds work” (174–175).
The last essay in the book is “Decriminalising the Witch: The Origin of and Response to the 1736 Witchcraft Act” by Owen Davies. The 1736 Act largely repealed the 1604 Act, but itself remains as part of English law until 1951. As Davies rightly notes to end both his essay and the essay portion of the book, “the 1604 Act was repealed when the majority of the population continued to fear witches. The 1736 Act was repealed when witches, however defined, ceased to worry the popular consciousness” (232).
The book closes with four appendices giving the texts of the Witchcraft Acts of 1563, 1604, and 1736 as well as Canon 72 of the Church of England of 1604, which deals with the clergy and prophesying and exorcism.
To conclude briefly: Witchcraft and the Act of 1604 is a very useful addition to the literature about the English witchcraft persecutions that students of English and European witchcraft will want to read.
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[Review length: 1041 words • Review posted on March 30, 2010]