As to Coke's attitude towards this subject, we know
not a thing, save that he served on this committee. The committee seems
to have found enough to do. At any rate the proposed statute underwent
revision.[11] Doubtless the privy council had a hand in the matter;[12]
indeed it is not unlikely that the bill was drawn up under its
direction. On the 9th of June, about two months and a half after its
introduction, the statute passed its final reading in the Lords.[13] It
repealed the statute of Elizabeth's reign and provided that any one who
"shall use, practise or exercise any Invocation or Conjuration of any
evill and wicked Spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertaine,
employe, feede, or rewarde any evill and wicked Spirit to or for any
intent or purpose; or take up any dead man, woman, or child, ... to be
imployed or used in any manner of Witchcrafte" should suffer death as a
felon. It further provided that any one who should "take upon him or
them by Witchcrafte ... to tell or declare in what place any treasure of
Golde or Silver should or might be founde ... or where Goods or Things
loste or stollen should be founde or become, or to the intent to provoke
any person to unlawfull love, or wherebie any Cattell or Goods of any
person shall be destroyed, wasted, or impaired, or to hurte or destroy
any person in his or her bodie, although the same be not effected and
done," should for the first offence suffer one year's imprisonment with
four appearances in the pillory, and for the second offence, death. The
law explains itself. Not only the killing of people by the use of evil
spirits, but even the using of evil spirits in such a way as actually
to cause hurt was a capital crime. The second clause punished white
magic and the intent to hurt, even where it "be not effected," by a
year's imprisonment and the pillory. It can be easily seen that one of
the things which the framers of the statute were attempting to
accomplish in their somewhat awkward wording was to make the fact of
witchcraft as a felony depend chiefly upon a single form of evidence,
the testimony to the use of evil spirits.

We have seen why people with James's convictions about contracts with
the Devil might desire to rest the crime upon this kind of proof.[14] It
can be readily understood, too, how the statute would work in practice.
Hitherto it had been possible to arraign a witch on the accusations of
her neighbors, but it was not possible to send he