PAST CRIMESsentence to be invoked, and all other charges were treated as lesser
offences. In 1604 however, James I revised the law to make all and any
witchcraft liable to the death penalty. Nevertheless, very few witches were
tried or executed in England, partly because English law did not allow the
accused to be tortured. The tortures of the Inquisition led to people
confessing not only their own crimes, but crimes allegedly committed by
their families, neighbours and workmates, who in turn, when tortured,
added more names to the list. Many of the accused in England were
acquitted or simply fined. Less than 500 executions took place between
1550 and 1685, although in Scotland the number was three times higher. In
the same period, there were 50,000 witch trials in Germany and, between
1625 and 1635, some 6,000 people were burned at witches in Bamberg,
Mainz, Cologne and Würzburg.
A notorious witch trial occurred in 1441. Among the accused was the
duchess of Gloucester, along with her personal clerk, her chaplain, a
physician/vicar from her household and a woman named Margery
Jourdemayne, known as the‘witch of Eye next Westminster’. Margery had
‘form’ –she had previously been imprisoned for sorcery. It is possible that
Margery was a purveyor of lovecharms and other philtres to the ladies of the
royal court. The duchess claimed that Margery had previously supplied her
with potions to encourage the duke to marry her. The affair began in
midsummer when the duchess, Eleanor, was told that three of her servants had
been accused of a conspiracy to harm the king, Henry VI. Henry’s heir was
the duke of Gloucester, and it may be that Eleanor’s clerk had cast her
horoscope to see if she would become queen; the implication was, of course,
that as this could only happen if the king died, there could have been a plot to
kill him to make sure of a favourable outcome for the duchess. Further
indictments accused Eleanor of more dabbling in the black arts with this end
in view.
Apprised of this, Henry commissioned his own‘reading’, which was more
favourable; his council charged the duchess’men with conspiring to kill the
king using necromancy. The clerk was publicly humiliated and made to swear
to give up all sorcery; the physician was imprisoned in the Tower on a charge
of heresy and plotting to do away with the king. Roger, the clerk, implicated
the duchess, saying that she had egged him on because she wanted to know
her future. Eleanor was brought before a church court and charged with
witchcraft, heresy and treason; she was then imprisoned at Leeds Castle to
await a further trial. During the church court trial, Eleanor implicated
Margery, saying she had sought the witch’s advice. Margery was arrested. In