Ahead of this evening’s session of the IHR’s Parliaments, Politics, and People seminar, Lewis Brennen, PhD candidate at the University of Southampton, summarises the themes that he covered in his paper, ‘The Political and Religious Origins of the 1563 Witchcraft Act’, at our last session…
The 1563 Witchcraft Act, formally titled an ‘Act agaynst
Conjuracons Inchantments and Witchecraftes’, was one of the most significant
pieces of early modern English legislation. It formally criminalised witchcraft
and imposed the death penalty in certain circumstances. This was England’s
second (but arguably most important) witchcraft statute and was fundamental to
the entirety of the English witch-trials.
Since the early eighteenth century there have been two
competing explanations for the introduction of the 1563 Act. The first of these
is that Bishop John Jewel delivered a powerful sermon before Queen Elizabeth
calling for legal action to be taken against witches, and this led directly…
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