An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft. With Observations upon Matters of Fact; tending to clear the Texts of the Sacred Scriptures, and confute the vulgar Errors about that Point.

HUTCHINSON, FRANCIS

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FIRST EDITION, XV, [5], 270, [2], very occasional light staining, ownership mark to front free endpaper, bookplate to pastedown, contemporary panelled calf, blind tooled, spine head worn, 8vo, London, R. Knaplock, 1718

Francis Hutchinson's famously sceptical witchcraft text has long enjoyed an intimate connection with the historiography of the decline of educated belief in witchcraft.

England may have escaped the worst ravages of the witch-craze of the early modern period, but Hutchinson was a resident of Suffolk from 1690 to 1720 (first in Hoxne and then Bury St Edmunds), a county that, more than most, had witnessed at first hand the social and human cost of witch-hunting. Suffolk bore a large part of the brunt of England's only clear-cut example of a European-style witch panic, the mass witch-hunts conducted in East Anglia between 1645 and 1647 by Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne. Of the 250 or so suspected witches brought before the authorities, 117 were from Suffolk. It is estimated that about 100 of these 250 suspects were executed. This episode in witchcraft history held a special interest for Hutchinson, who detailed it in the Historical Essay. Hutchinson believed that the whole episode claimed 40 Suffolk lives, including some residents of Bury St Edmunds and Hoxne. Hutchinson's knowledge of these cases came from reading relevant literature (including Hopkins' own book about the episode) and by asking Hoxne residents alive in 1645 to recount their experiences.

It is argued that by this time witchcraft had become a marginal concern for mainstream educated culture because it was no longer needed, or able, to perform its original ideological function of forging Christian unity by bolstering the ideal of a confessional state. The idea of a confessional state was increasingly considered unattainable or intellectually unattractive, especially after the trial in 1712 of an elderly woman named Jane Wenham from Walkern, Hertfordshire. Wenham's trial saw witchcraft beliefs become embroiled in the party conflict of Anne's reign.

The trial of Jane Wenham also had a profound effect on Hutchinson.

In March 1712, Wenham was found guilty as charged by a jury and was sentenced to death by hanging. She was saved from the gallows by the intervention of the sceptical presiding judge, Sir John Powell, who ordered her to be reprieved before securing her a royal pardon from Queen Anne on 22 July 1712. The experience of attending her trial not only persuaded Hutchinson to re-draft the Historical essay in preparation for publication, but to visit Wenham after her acquittal in a house provided for her own safety at Gilston, Hertfordshire, by landowner, Colonel Plummer. After the trial, Hutchinson wrote to Sir Hans Sloane to ask him to approach Judge John Powell to see whether Powell would mind the Historical essay being dedicated to him. Hutchinson believed he could not do so himself because this would have overstepped his station as ?both a perfect stranger' to Powell and 'an obscure country parson?. Hutchinson admired the way in which the sceptical Powell had handled the Wenham trial, doing everything in his power to persuade the jury to bring in an innocent verdict. Powell even stated, after a witness had accused Wenham of flying, that 'there is no law against flying'.

Provenance:

Billers

Finborough Library

[European Americana 720/126. Sabin 34063. Wellcome III p. 321., Sneddon, Witchcraft and whigs, 2017].

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Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft. With Observations upon Matters of Fact; tending to clear the Texts of the Sacred Scriptures, and confute the vulgar Errors about that Point.
• État de l'article: Assez bon