Something to be thankful for.
Perhaps we can discuss this in 2306 as we cover criminal justice.
- Click here for the entry.
The Witchcraft Act (9 Geo. II c. 5) was a law passed by the Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1735 which made it a crime for a person to claim that any human being had magical powers or was guilty of practising witchcraft. With this, the law abolished the hunting and executions of witches in Great Britain. The maximum penalty set out by the Act was a year's imprisonment.
It thus marks the end point of the Witch trials in the Early Modern period for Great Britain and the beginning of the "modern legal history of witchcraft", repealing the earlier Witchcraft Acts which were based on a widespread belief in the genuine existence of magic and witchcraft.[1]
The law was reverting to the view of the medieval Church[2] that witchcraft and magic were illusory, treating as an offence not the supposed practice of witchcraft but the superstitious belief in its existence.[1] The Act reflected the general trend in Europe, where after a peak in the mid-17th century, and a series of late outbursts in the late 17th century, witch-trials quickly subsided after 1700. The last person executed for witchcraft in Great Britain was Janet Horne in 1727.
