Magic as a Political Crime in Medieval and Early Modern England: A History of Sorcery and Treason (International Library of Historical Studies)

To fi nd out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. ## Contents Preface ix Abbreviations xiii Chronology xv A witch at Looe, Cornwall claims to have hindered the navy in the Battle of Sole Bay and made Queen Catherine of Braganza barren 1675/6 An unnamed English nobleman is involved in sacrilegious rites aimed against Louis XIV in France 1685 The duke of Monmouth is found in possession of magical charms at his execution for high treason 1735 A new act of Parliament repeals the 1604 act against conjuration and witchcraft Magic as a Political Crime xviii treason-cum-sorcery does not hold up quite as well in England as it does in Scotland, but the tendency to pile supernatural accusations on suspected traitors operated on both sides of the border. Magical acts could also become political crimes when they were associated with activities proscribed by government policy at a particular time. In the 1530s any kind of prognostication or prophecy that hinted at comeuppance for Henry VIII's religious changes was treated as a political crime. P. G. Maxwell-Stuart states well how easy it was for someone to become the target of a charge of treasonous magic: Inquisitiveness might lead someone to ask when the ruler would die and who was likely to be his or her successor; or to find out whether such and such an uprising, rebellion, or war stood a chance of being successful; or to discover a person's career prospects in royal or imperial service. Should the individual's prospects look favourable or grim, they could always be assisted by magic. So, too, a rebellion or the succession to the throne. Consequently both divination and magic could be seen as fraught with danger to the authority and stability of the state. 3 In most cases, we must accept that the original intentions of people accused of magical crimes are no longer recoverable. Some may have intended to perform magic, some may have been innocent victims, and some may have been magicians whose practices were mistaken for treason. Ultimately, as Maxwell-Stuart suggests, it was what 'magic could be seen as' by the authorities that mattered. Any attempt to assess the guilt or innocence of the accused parties is almost impossible, primarily because the historical sources are almost always the product of an official investigation or a report on it. However, basing this study solely on official sources would mean ignoring the question of whether government suspicions accurately reflected what magicians themselves thought they could do. It is crucial, therefore, for the historian to engage with the history of magic, since even if the truth of the magical practices of particular accused traitors is lost to us in official accounts, we can study comparable magical practices preserved in other texts. A significant gap often existed between official fears of what magicians might do and what magicians themselves tried to do. had the effect of controlling witch-hunting. 11 The latter claim may or may not be true, but the evidence presented in this book tends to undermine Kelly's view that early modern monarchs (or at least their councillors) stopped worrying about magic; if anything, they became more anxious than their medieval predecessors. Historians specifically concerned with the law of treason have also neglected the subject of treasonous magic. Lacey Baldwin Smith's Treason in Tudor England (1986) examined the unrealistic schemes of Pritchard (1902 -73) used the terms 'magic' and 'witchcraft' but declined to define them, describing them as 'only labels which help us sort out the facts'. Such labels could be discarded if they proved unhelpful, and 'The facts will be the same without their labels'. 23 Copenhaver defends Evans-Pritchard's nominalist approach, noting that 'since no essences are available, no definitions will be possible'. 24 The 'terminological slipperiness across cultures and through time' associated with magic must be acknowledged, 25 yet at the same time the adoption of some working conceptual distinctions is crucial to understanding people's beliefs. The classic approach to magic and religion within the historiography of medieval and early modern Europe, advocated by contemporary world, is well-nigh impossible. Furthermore, before we can ask why the people of the past believed something, we must try to understand exactly what it was they believed, as far as possible in their own terms. Passing moral or rational judgements on the private beliefs or practices of long-dead people is a futile exercise that makes for bad history. Magic has its own flexible internal logic, and magical thinking remains one possible response to modernity, 36 lingering in a society long after conscious belief in its power has disappeared. 'witch' was used more broadly than just to refer to people who were thought to harm by projected thought (ill-wishing or 'malefice'). Someone might be accused of being a witch for creating an effigy as well as mere ill-wishing, and virtually the same ritual methods used to cause harm (such as constructing a wax effigy) might also be used to attempt healing (indeed, medieval books of magic advise that a person harmed by means of effigy magic can also be healed by it). Furthermore, counter-magic directed against harmful magic often simply reversed the procedure originally used to harm, yet was not considered witchcraft. From the sixteenth century onwards, the English words 'witch' and 'witchcraft' had purely negative connotations. Magic, by contrast, could be performed for both good and evil purposes. However, magic performed for evil might also be called witchcraft. A distinction between witchcraft and magic in purely functional terms is therefore problematic. Another approach is to accept that the words used to describe a supernatural accusation against someone in early modern England said more about who that person was than the practices of which he or she was accused. Thus an uneducated person, especially a woman, might be accused of witchcraft, while an educated man was more likely to be accused of magic. There are "Treason and magic were first linked together during the reign of Edward II. Theories of occult conspiracy then regularly led to major political scandals, such as the trial of Eleanor Cobham Duchess of Gloucester in 1441. While accusations of magical treason against high-ranking figures were indeed a staple of late medieval English power politics, they acquired new significance at the Reformation when the 'superstition' embodied by magic came to be associated with proscribed Catholic belief. Francis Young here offers the first concerted historical analysis of allegations of the use of magic either to harm or kill the monarch, or else manipulate the course of political events in England, between the fourteenth century and the dawn of the Enlightenment. His book addresses a subject usually either passed over or elided with witchcraft: a quite different historical phenomenon. He argues that while charges of treasonable magic certainly were used to destroy reputations or to ensure the convictions of undesirables, magic was also perceived as a genuine threat by English governments into the Civil War era and beyond."--Bloomsbury Publishing "Treason and magic were first linked together during the reign of Edward II. Theories of occult conspiracy then regularly led to major political scandals, such as the trial of Eleanor Cobham Duchess of Gloucester in 1441. While accusations of magical treason against high-ranking figures were indeed a staple of late medieval English power politics, they acquired new significance at the Reformation when the 'superstition' embodied by magic came to be associated with proscribed Catholic belief. Francis Young here offers the first concerted historical analysis of allegations of the use of magic either to harm or kill the monarch, or else manipulate the course of political events in England, between the fourteenth century and the dawn of the Enlightenment. His book addresses a subject usually either passed over or elided with witchcraft: a quite different historical phenomenon. He argues that while charges of treasonable magic certainly were used to destroy reputations or to ensure the convictions of undesirables, magic was also perceived as a genuine threat by English governments into the Civil War era and beyond." -- book jacket