Posted on 03/05/2011 7:12:18 PM PST by decimon
LONDON (Reuters) – A 350-year-old notebook which documents the trials of women convicted of witchcraft in England during the 17th century has been published online.
The notebook written by Nehemiah Wallington, an English Puritan, recounts the fate of women accused of having relationships with the devil at a time when England was embroiled in a bitter civil war.
The document reveals the details of a witchcraft trial held in Chelmsford in July 1645, when more than a hundred suspected witches were serving time in Essex and Suffolk according to his account.
"Divers (many) of them voluntarily and without any forcing or compulsion freely declare that they have made a covenant with the Devill," he wrote.
"Som Christians have been killed by their meanes," he added.
Of the 30 women on trial in Chelmsford, 14 were hanged.
Wallington also recounts the experiences of Rebecca West, a suspected witch who confessed to sleeping with the devil when she was tortured because "she found her selfe in such extremity of torture and amazement that she would not enure (endure) it againe for the world." Her confession spared her.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
CROWD: Burn! Burn her!
BEDEMIR: Quiet, quiet. Quiet! There are ways of telling whether she is a witch.
CROWD: Are there? What are they?
BEDEMIR: Tell me, what do you do with witches?
VILLAGER #2: Burn!
CROWD: Burn, burn them up!
BEDEMIR: And what do you burn apart from witches?
VILLAGER #1: More witches!
VILLAGER #2: Wood!
BEDEMIR: So, why do witches burn?
[pause]
VILLAGER #3: B—... ‘cause they’re made of wood...?
BEDEMIR: Good!
CROWD: Oh yeah, yeah...
BEDEMIR: So, how do we tell whether she is made of wood?
VILLAGER #1: Build a bridge out of her.
BEDEMIR: Aah, but can you not also build bridges out of stone?
VILLAGER #2: Oh, yeah.
BEDEMIR: Does wood sink in water?
VILLAGER #1: No, no.
VILLAGER #2: It floats! It floats!
VILLAGER #1: Throw her into the pond!
CROWD: The pond!
BEDEMIR: What also floats in water?
VILLAGER #1: Bread!
VILLAGER #2: Apples!
VILLAGER #3: Very small rocks!
VILLAGER #1: Cider!
VILLAGER #2: Great gravy!
VILLAGER #1: Cherries!
VILLAGER #2: Mud!
VILLAGER #3: Churches — churches!
VILLAGER #2: Lead — lead!
ARTHUR: A duck.
CROWD: Oooh.
BEDEMIR: Exactly! So, logically...,
VILLAGER #1: If... she.. weighs the same as a duck, she’s made of wood.
BEDEMIR: And therefore—?
VILLAGER #1: A witch!
CROWD: A witch!
BEDEMIR: We shall use my larger scales!
[yelling]
BEDEMIR: Right, remove the supports!
[whop]
[creak]
CROWD: A witch! A witch!
WITCH: It’s a fair cop.
CROWD: Burn her! Burn! [yelling]
The reason that there are few, or no, witches around today is taht we killed all of them off a few hundred years ago.
Ergot poisoning has been basically disproved in the case of the Salem Witch Trials because the girls who were doing the accusing apparently had symptoms that turned off and on, in regards to the accused witch ‘afflicting’ them.
If they were truly suffering the affect of ergot poisoning then they would not have been able to be so well controlled in the courtroom and then all together become ‘convulsing’ when a certain accused person took the stand, then return to completely normal when they stood down. For instance, they always became affected when Rebecca Nurse, an accused older woman by the afflicted girls, took the stand. Oh, they did get her hung. In fact one of the girls admitted, “I must have some sport”.
Ergot would not have only affected the afflicted girls in town, and no other townfolk.
That and you have to have a vitamin A deficiency to allow for ergot poisoning, and in Salem the diet was not deficient in Vit A.
Vincent Price at his finest. And a truly horrifying, graphic film, not for the faint of heart.
Also released as Witchmaster General, the movie shows some of the methods used in that time and place to extract confessions from the accussed, including throwing suspected witches into a river: If you are innocent, you drown and die. If you don't drown, you are 'guilty' and sentenced to a more gruesome death.
I love the ending though.
I wasnt talking about the Salem witch trials. That may have been the result of Mass Hysteria.
I was talkng about earlier in Europe.
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