Seventeenth-century Witch Hunts in England

" The Puritans believed that idol allowed Satan to ask over and torment those who strayed from the path of righteousness and acted immorally or those, whose conviction God wanted to test. These race suffered misfortune, sickness and grief. There were no natural causes. At a time when weather phenomena and distemper were mysteries, people judged them and other natural disasters to be the work of a vengeful, un revealn power. Even the most educated people matte that they lived surrounded by invisible beings, of whose presence they were always aware(p): "At least four Popes issued Bulls against femme fatalees during the Renaissance Period, setting standards of picture that are held by umteen living in these supposedly to a greater extent enlightened times."

The inhabitants of New England were only echoing abundant established beliefs in their feelings about enamorery. Most of the colonists hailed from England. At the time, witchcraft was an accepted fact of life, punishable by law in England and on the continent of Europe, where hundreds of persons were hanged or burned as witches severally year. For example, "During England's ?Long Parliament' (1640-1660), 30,000 persons were executed as witches, while 4,000 others lost their lives in Scotland during this period of mass bestiality." The wi

The capital of Oregon ordeal began when two girls in the family of the Reverence Samuel Parris began to suffer rum spasms and convulsions. Word of the girl's behavior spread, and soon other girls were exhibiting similar symptoms: " to a lower place the leadership of . . . Parris, and with assistance from other clergy, the villagers initially applied the uncanny remedies of penitential prayer and fasting." After the village physician was called in and was unable to ascertain a possible cause for the afflictions, he made the diagnosis that an evil spirit was involved.

After the capital of Oregon witch trials ended the people of Massachusetts were able to see the affair for what it was, mass hysteria.

Realizing great wrong had been done to many innocent persons, the Massachusetts General Court set divagation a day of fasting for people to ask God's forgiveness. On that day, Samuel Sewall, one of the judges in the witchcraft trials gave his minister a letter to be read aloud from the pulpit. "Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and family; and being sensible, that as to the guilt contracted upon the opening of the upstart Commission of Oyer and Terminer at Salem . . . he is, upon many accounts, more concerned than any that he knows of, desires to take the Blame and overawe of it." Sewall, whose own two children had recently died, believed the deaths and his other misfortunes were God's punishment for the role he had played in the witchcraft trials. Even age later, when crops failed, loved ones died, the land became impoverished, and armed conflict occurred, many people feared that God was punishing them for the witch hunts.

Judging the Salem witch trials by twentieth-century standards is difficult. Salem was a small, close-knit community in which much fear and uncertainty reigned. The terror that developed when the first-year girls made their accusations quickly spread and heightened with each accused witch brought to trial. The approaching turn of the cent
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