Judge Not …

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n                  The two judges at Lancaster for the witch trials in 1612nwere Sir Edward Bromley and Sir James Altham. Both were judges on the Northernncircuit; at the Lent assizes at York, Lord Bromley had overseen the trial ofnJennet Preston for bewitching ‘Dodg-sonnes child’, at which she was found notnguilty by the jury. In July, at her second trial, for causing the death ofnThomas Lister, the judge was James Altham, and he had condemned her to thengallows. We know very little else about Lord Bromley; there is no record of himnhanging witches prior to 1612, there are records from Lancaster that in 1614 henorder the hanging of Cicilia Dawson, of Walton-le-Dale, for killing bynwitchcraft Elena Moldinge of Houghton and ‘wasting’ two local men, and innLincoln on March 11^th 1619 he condemned Margaret and Phillip Flowernto death for witchcraft  – ‘to thenterror of all beholders’. 

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nAltham had already hanged a witch, at the ChelmsfordnAssizes in 1607. He was one of the judges whose opinion was sought by the LordnChancellor, Sir Thomas Egerton, in two cases of heresy in 1611-2. BartholomewnLegate was a London draper, who began preaching, together with his brothersnThomas and Walter, in the 1590s. Their message would later be taken up by thenSeekers (precursors of the Quakers); they rejected the rituals of allnestablished churches, and believed there were prophets to come in the future.nBartholomew was a charismatic figure; good-looking, fluent and well versed innScripture.  He and brother Thomas wereneventually arrested for heresy in 1611 (and Thomas died in Newgate gaol); KingnJames I questioned Bartholomew himself, but they argued about the nature ofnChrist’s divinity – and the ‘Defender of the Faith’ took his role verynseriously. Legate was sent before a Consistory Court, where he was found guiltynand handed over to the secular authorities. The Lord Chancellor had, withndoubtful legality, to issue a writ ‘de heretico comburendo’, and Altham wasnpleased to assure him of the legality of this. The writ issued, Legate wasntaken to Smithfield on March 18^th 1612, and before a great crowd,nunrepentant, he was burned at the stake. He was the last heretic to be burnednin London. 

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nThe doubtful distinction of being the last heretic to be burned innEngland was Edward Wightman. Wightman was also a dissenter, a mercer fromnBurton, who had become involved with the Puritans, and had investigated thencase of The Boy of Burton in 1596, the supposedly possessed child who wasnexorcised by John Darrel (remember him? – the fraudulent Puritan preacher). As hisnviews became more extreme, Wightman’s preaching and writings brought him to thenattention of the Church authorities. Some of his views were reasonable – hendenied the existence of the Trinity, argued that infant baptism was wrong andnbelieved the Apostolic creeds also to be wrong. Some of his views were barmy –nhe was the incarnation of the prophet Elijah, God had ordained him to be thenSaviour of the World, he was the Promised Messiah of the Old Testament and thatndenial of any of this was blasphemy, punishable by death. 

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nUnsurprisingly, henwas sent before a Consistory Court, found guilty and sentenced to death. He wasntaken to the stake at Lichfield, but when the fires were lit, he quicklynrecanted and was pulled ‘well scorched’ from the flames. He was taken beforenthe court again, where he changed his mind again and blasphemed ‘morenaudaciously than before’, so was again sentenced to death. On April 11^thn1612, he was tied to another stake in Lichfield and the fires were lit again.nOnce more, Wightman recanted, but the Sheriff would have none of it, saying henwouldn’t bear the cost of more wasted faggots, and Wightman died in the flames. 

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nAgain, Altham had given advice to the Lord Chancellor that the required writ tonburn him had been legal. However “… such burning of heretics much startledncommon people” (in the words of Thomas Fuller in The Church History of Britain)nand thereafter heretics were left “… privately waste themselves away in thenprison, rather than to grace them, and amuse others, with the solemnity of anpublic execution.” [Ibid.]. 

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nWitches were executed in England until 1682 (somenargue 1684, but there is only one source of this – sentence was passed on AlicenMolland, but sentence may not have been carried out), and in Scotland untiln1735, until alterations were made to the laws – these revisions remained innforce until 1951, when the witchcraft laws were finally repealed. The lastnperson convicted with witchcraft in England was Helen Duncan, in April 1944,nwho was jailed for nine months, until Prime Minister Churchill visited her innjail and denounced the conviction as ‘tomfoolery’. Her family are stillnfighting to have the verdict overturned. Allegations of malicious witchcraftnare still being made, across the world. People are still being killed onnsuspicion of witchcraft. The corpses of men, women and children murdered by, ornfor being, witches turn up with sickening regularity. In the twenty-firstncentury. Across the world.

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