The existence of witchcraft was, no doubt, received and credited in England, as in the countries on the Continent, and originally punished accordingly.  But after the fourteenth century the practices which fell under such a description were thought unworthy of any peculiar animadversion, unless they were connected with something which would have been of itself a capital crime, by whatever means it had been either essayed or accomplished.  Thus the supposed paction between a witch and the demon was perhaps deemed in itself to have terrors enough to prevent its becoming an ordinary crime, and was not, therefore, visited with any statutory penalty.  But to attempt or execute bodily harm to others through means of evil spirits, or, in a word, by the black art, was actionable at common law as much as if the party accused had done the same harm with an arrow or pistol-shot.  The destruction or abstraction of goods by the like instruments, supposing the charge proved, would, in like manner, be punishable. A fortiori, the consulting soothsayers, familiar spirits, or the like, and the obtaining and circulating pretended prophecies to the unsettlement of the State and the endangering of the King’s title, is yet a higher degree of guilt.  And it may be remarked that the inquiry into the date of the King’s life bears a close affinity with the desiring or compassing the death of the Sovereign, which is the essence of high treason.  Upon such charges repeated trials took place in the courts of the English, and condemnations were pronounced, with sufficient justice, no doubt, where the connexion between the resort to sorcerers and the design to perpetrate a felony could be clearly proved.  We would not, indeed, be disposed to go the length of so high an authority as Selden, who pronounces (in his “Table-Talk”) that if a man heartily believed that he could take the life of another by waving his hat three times and crying Buzz! and should, under this fixed opinion, wave his hat and cry Buzz! accordingly, he ought to be executed as a murderer.  But a false prophecy of the King’s death is not to be dealt with exactly on the usual principle; because, however idle in itself, the promulgation of such a prediction has, in times such as we are speaking of, a strong tendency to work its completion.

Many persons, and some of great celebrity, suffered for the charge of trafficking with witches, to the prejudice of those in authority.  We have already mentioned the instance of the Duchess of Gloucester, in Henry the Sixth’s reign, and that of the Queen Dowager’s kinsmen, in the Protectorate of Richard, afterwards the Third.  In 1521, the Duke of Buckingham was beheaded, owing much to his having listened to the predictions of one Friar Hopkins.  In the same reign, the Maid of Kent, who had been esteemed a prophetess, was put to death as a cheat.  She suffered with seven persons who had managed her fits for the support of the Catholic religion, and confessed her fraud upon the scaffold.  About seven years after this, Lord Hungerford was beheaded for consulting certain soothsayers concerning the length of Henry the Eighth’s life.  But these cases rather relate to the purpose for which the sorcery was employed, than to the fact of using it.