The belief in witches indeed seemed intensified after the reformation. Luther said: “I would have no compassion for a witch, I would burn them all.” He looked upon those who were afflicted with blindness, lameness, or idiocy from birth,[61] as possessed of demons and there is record of his attempt to drown an afflicted child in whom he declared no soul existed, its body being animated by the devil alone. But a magistrate more enlightened or more humane than the great reformer, interfered to save the child’s life. Were Luther on earth again today with the sentiments of his lifetime, he would regard the whole community as mad. Asylums for the blind, the dumb and idiots, curative treatment for cripples and all persons naturally deformed, would be to him a direct intervention with the ways of providence. The belief of this great reformer proves the folly of considering a man wise, because he is pious. Religion and humanity were as far apart with him after the reformation as while he was yet a monk. The fruits of monasticism continued their effects, and his latter life showed slight intellectual or spiritual advancement. As late as 1768 John Wesley declared the giving up of witchcraft to be in effect giving up the Bible. Such was his low estimate of woman that he regarded his own wife as too sinful to conduct family prayers, although to Susannah, equally with John, is Methodism indebted for its existence. In Great Britain, the rapid increase of belief in witchcraft after the reformation was especially noticeable. The act of Parliament which declared witchcraft to be felony, confirmed under Henry VIII, was again confirmed under Elizabeth. In England the reformation brought with it great increase of tyranny both civil and ecclesiastical. Under Henry VIII many new treasons were created. This king who sent the largest proportion of his six wives to the headsman’s block, who neither hesitated at incest or at casting the taint of illegitimacy upon the daughter who succeeded him upon the throne, could not be expected to show justice or mercy to subject women. The penal laws of even celibate Elizabeth were largely the result of the change in religion of the realm.[62] The queen, absolute in Church as in State, who “bent priest and prelate to her fiery will,” caused the laws to bear with equal severity upon protestant and catholic. Under her “A Statute of Uniformity for Abolishing Diversity of Opinions,” was enacted, and the clergy were continued in the enjoyment of secular power. Women received no favor. The restrictions of the catholic church in regard to the residence of a priest’s mother or sister in his house were now extended to the laity. No man was permitted to give his widowed mother or orphan sister a home in his house without permission from the authorities, and then but for a limited time. Single women were allowed no control over their own actions. Twelve years was the legal marriageable age for a girl, after which period if still unmarried she could be bound out at the option of the court.[63] Nor did the Cromwellian period lessen woman’s persecution. The number of witches executed under the Presbyterian domination of the Long Parliament according to a list[64] that has been preserved, amounted to between three and four thousand persons. The legal profession no less than the clerical asserted its belief in witchcraft, referring to the Bible in confirmation. Blackstone said:
To deny the possibility, nay the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God, in various passages of the Old and New Testament and the thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibiting laws.
The protestant clergy equally with the catholic priesthood, were charged with fostering a belief in witchcraft for the purpose of gain. At no period of the world has a more diabolical system of robbery existed. For the sake of a few pounds or pence, the most helpless of human beings, made helpless through church teaching as to their unworthiness, were by the church daily brought under accusation, exposing them to a cruel death at the hand of irresponsible tyranny. The system of thuggery in India, shines white by side of this christian system of robbery, inaugurated by the church and sustained by the state. In the name of religion, the worst crimes against humanity have ever been perpetrated. On the accession of James I he ordered the learned work of Reginald Scott against witchcraft, to be burned.[65] This was in accordance with the act of Parliament 1605-9 which ratified a belief in witchcraft in the three kingdoms. At this date the tragedy of Macbeth appeared, deeply tinged with the belief of the times. A few persons maintaining possession of their senses, recognized the fact that fear, apprehension and melancholy gave birth to the wildest self-delusions; medical experience recording many instances of this character. In an age when ignorance and superstition prevailed among the people at large, while vice, ignorance, and cupidity were in equal force among those in power, the strangest beliefs became prevalent.
Sir George Mackenzie, the eminent king’s advocate of Scotland, conducting many trials for witchcraft, became convinced it was largely a subject of fear and delusion. He said:
Those poor persons who are ordinarily accused of this crime are poor ignorant creatures, and ofttimes women who understood not the nature of what they are accused of, and many mistake their own fears and apprehensions for witchcraft, of which I shall give you two instances; one of a poor man, who after he had confessed witchcraft being asked how he saw the devil, he answered “like flies dancing about a candle.” Another of a woman who asked sincerely; when accused, “if a woman might be a witch and not know it?” And it is dangerous then. Those who of all others are the most simple should be tried for a crime which of all others is the most mysterious. Those poor creatures when defamed became so confused with fear and the close prison in which they were kept, and so starved for want of meals and sleep (either of which wants is enough to destroy the strongest reason), when men are confounded with fear and apprehension they will imagine things very ridiculous and absurd. Melancholy often makes men imagine they are horses. Most of these poor creatures are tortured by their keepers who are persuaded they do God good service. Most of all that were taken were tortured in this manner and this usage was the ground of their complaints.
To such an extent was this persecution carried even in protestant Scotland that accused women sometimes admitted their guilt that they might die and thus escape from a world where even if cleared, they would ever after be looked upon with suspicion. Sir George Mackenzie visiting some women who had confessed, one of them told him “under secrecie” that:
She had not confessed because she was guilty but being a poor creature who wrought for her meat and being defined for a witch, she knew she would starve, for no person thereafter would give her either meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her and hound dogs at her and therefore she desired to be out of the world, whereupon she wept bitterly and upon her knees called upon God to witness what she said.
Even under all the evidence of the persecution and cruel tortures that innocent women endured during the witchcraft period, no effort of the imagination can portray the sufferings of an accused woman. The death this poor woman chose, in voluntarily admitting a crime of which she was innocent, rather than to accept a chance of life with the name of “witch” clinging to her, was one of the most painful of which we can conceive, although in the diversity of torture inflicted upon the witch it is scarcely possible to say which one was the least agonizing. In no country has the devil ever been more fully regarded as a real personage, ever on the watch for souls, than in Christian Scotland. Sir George says:
Another told me she was afraid the devil would challenge a right to her soul as the minister said when he desired her to confess; and therefore she desired to die.[66]
The following is an account of the material used and the expenses attending the execution of two witches in Scotland.