A Trial of Witches: A Seventeenth-Century Witchcraft Prosecution

""On Monday, March 17, 1662, in the English market town of Bury St. Edmunds, an assize site on the Norfolk circuit, two old women were hanged by the neck until dead."" Geis, professor emeritus of criminology at UC-Irvine, and Bunn, a local English historian, set out to discover the circumstances of and the participants in a single witchcraft trial, one they describe as ""among the most malevolent occurrences in the annals of the human race, and among the most pathetic."" Using as source material a report written by the judge's marshal 20 years later, the authors flesh out their in-depth study by considering the backgrounds of the major figures, including two prominent players: Sir Thomas Browne, a doctor and author of Religio Medici, a man who prided himself on his critical thinking and who acted as witness for the complainants; and the judge, Sir Matthew Hale, one of the country's great legal scholars and a man with a reputation for impartiality. Little is known about the accused, Ann Denny and Rose Cullender, except that both were elderly and guilty of nothing more than being quarrelsome. Investigating how this gross injustice took place, the authors cite examples of witch-hunts and trials in Europe and America. They analyze the economic, political and social pressures this and other witchcraft trials. In addition to its value as a historic record, this book offers a tragic lesson in the extraordinary willingness of people to rely uncritically on tainted information and do awful things. (Jan.)