The English Witchcraft Act of 1563 Revisited

The dominant interpretation of the passing of the English Witchcraft Act of 1563 has sought to place it in the context of attempts to create a legislative framework to prosecute Catholic conspiracy at the beginning of Elizabeth I’s reign. This article challenges that interpretation. We suggest that the Act needs to be understood within a fuller account of the attempts to enact witchcraft legislation over the course of the sixteenth century, and also of the halting attempts of the Crown to establish the juridical framework of the new protestant church. After some comments on the Henrician witchcraft statute we turn to the attempts to create new processes to prosecute witches under the militantly protestant regime of Edward VI, which, if successfully authorised, would have enshrined a theological definition of witchcraft—based on the Satanic pact—in English law. We then trace the immediate pre-history of the Elizabethan statute, before charting its twisting course through Parliament. Throughout, we aim to show that the Elizabethan statute was not primarily directed against Catholics or produced in response to their nefarious activities. We demonstrate that a strong common law interest brought about the defeat of a particular view of witchcraft as a diabolical crime which, if adopted, would have made the history of English witchcraft look very different. Our account of the evolution of the English witchcraft statute of 1563 also exposes the wider concerns of common lawyers about the suitability of statute and common law as instruments to prosecute spiritual crimes, and reveals divisions between laity and clergy over the broader ambitions of protestant divines to create a more persecutory church of England than that produced in the Elizabethan religious settlement. The study of the passage of the Elizabethan witchcraft statute is revelatory of paths not taken in the age of the English Reformation.