Читать книгу The Discovery of Witchcraft. Facts, Fiction & Conspiracy Theories Behind the Medieval Witch Hunt онлайн

34 страница из 216

How then came he to inquire into and write so strongly against witchcraft? Before the time of the eighth Henry, sorcerers were dealt with by the ecclesiastical law, which punished them as heretics. Moreover, their supposed offences against the person seem, chiefly at least, to have been taken notice of when they were supposed to interfere with high or state matters or persons, as in the cases of Joan of Arc or Dame Eleanor Cobham. But in Henry’s time, probably through the extension of continental ideas, aided, it may be, by a desire to restrain the ecclesiastical power, c. 8 of the thirty-third year of his reign was passed. By this it was enacted, that witches, etc., who destroyed their neighbours, and made pictures [images] of them for magical purposes, or for the same purposes made crowns, swords, and the like, or pulled down crosses, or declared where things lost or stolen were become, should suffer death and loss of lands and goods, as felons, and lose the privileges of clergy and sanctuary. Afterwards, by 1 Edw. I, c. 12, this and other offences first made felonies in Henry’s time were no longer to be accounted such. Thirdly, in the fifth year of Elizabeth, Parliament, by its twelfth chapter, enacted, that whereas many have practised sorceries to the destruction of people and their goods, those that cause death shall suffer as was declared by 33 Henry VIII, c. 8, except that their wives and heirs shall not have their rights affected by such attainder. But that when a person was only injured, or their goods or cattle destroyed, the offenders should for the first offence suffer a year’s imprisonment, and once a quarter be exposed in the pillory in a market town for six hours, and there confess their offences; and for the second offence suffer death as felons, with the exceptions before rehearsed. While any who seek treasure, or would bring about unlawful love, or hurt anyone in his body or goods, should for a first offence be imprisoned and suffer as before, and for a second be imprisoned for life and forfeit his goods and cattle. This, so far as humanity is concerned, is a distinct advance on Henry’s enactment, though an apparent going back from that of Edward. Perhaps, as before, it arose from a desire to remove the offences from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical law, which would have burnt them, nor, as evidenced by its little results, does it seem to have been made through any mania or scare in the matter. This came on later, when, as we are told by Brian Darcie in 1582, at what time, under pie-crust promises of favour, he was endeavouring to get women to confess, and then be hanged,—“there is a man of great learning and knowledge come over lately into our Queenes Majestie, which hath advertised her what a companie and numbers of Witches be within Englande: whereupon I and other of her Justices have received Commission for the apprehending of as many as are within these limites.” Alas, this man of great learning and knowledge seems to have been none other than that otherwise light of the English Church, the great, good, and pious Bishop Jewel, who, having returned from a forced residence abroad, was speedily promoted by her Majesty, and in a sermon preached before her, in 1572, brought in the subject as follows:—