VIII. were there any enactments against
witchcraft in England; prior to the passage of these acts, the
persecution of a sorceress followed only upon an accusation of
poisoning. During some parts of the Middle Ages the crime of poisoning
was extensive, and certain women were adepts in making the deadly
potions. To such abandoned characters resorted persons of state who
desired to make away with hated rivals, or the men and women of the
nobility who sought to hide or to further their intrigues by the death
of someone who stood in their way. As the women who practised the
arts of the poisoner were also devotees of sorcery, the crime and
the superstition came to be thought of together. One reason for the
detestation of witches was the subtlety they displayed in concocting
poisons which slowly sapped the vitality of a person, as if by a
wasting illness. In 1541, conjuring, sorcery, and witchcraft were
placed in the list of capital offences. Similar statutes were enacted
during the succeeding reigns of Elizabeth and James I.

The curious matter of demoniacal possession called forth a great
many books and pamphlets treating of its nature, history, methods of
repression, and the dispossession of those under witches' spells. John
Wier, a physician, wrote a treatise, in the last half of the sixteenth
century, in which he described witches as but exaggerated types of the
perversity which is found in women generally. In the easy subjection
of the sex to malign influences he saw a proof of its greater moral
weakness.

The seventeenth century was as prolific of cases of persecution of
women for demon possession as any of those of the less enlightened
period of mediaevalism. In 1568, in a sermon before Queen Elizabeth,
Bishop Jewell said: "It may please your Grace to understand that
witches and sorcerers within these few last years are marvellously
increased within your Grace's realm. Your Grace's subjects pine away
even unto the death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their
speech is benumbed, their knees are bereft. I pray God they never
practise _further than upon the subjects_." The Bull of Innocent
VIII., in 1484, did not do more for the furtherance of persecution of
the unfortunates who came under suspicion of using magic than did the
declaration of Luther: "I should have no compassion on these witches;
I would burn all of them." As upon the continent, so in England
reformers took up the persecution of witches with k