The Thomas/Jane Weir Trials

It is often difficult to understand the thought process that other people’s might have had many years ago. A college professor and writer, Richard Godbeer attempts to explain the thought process of the people who were involved in witch trials in the year 1692 in his text “How Could They Believe That?”. He often tells students in college and high school that we can relate to how society was in 1692 and how their views on life, and specifically the supernatural forces, are completely justifiable. In this article he explains the social atmosphere, the environment in which the settlers lived in, as well as how thorough the process of persecution was.

In January 1692, when a group of juvenile girls began to display bizarre behavior, the tight-knit Puritan community of Salem, Massachusetts couldn’t explain the unusual afflictions and came to a conclusion. Witches had invaded Salem. This was the beginning of a period of mass hysteria known as The Salem Witch Trials. Hundreds of people were falsely accused of witchcraft and many paid the ultimate price of death. Nineteen people were hung, one was pressed to death, and as many as thirteen more died in prison. One of the accused Elizabeth Bassett Proctor, a faithful wife and mother, endured her fictitious accusation with honor and integrity.

The author’s purpose in writing this article was to inform the reader of the rise and decline of witch prosecutions, along with their lasting effects on the society. The author’s central argument is that historians do not usually focus on

The Salem witch trials, that occurred in colonial Massachusetts, were a hostile part of American history. People lived in a constant state of paranoia and fear. A great number of people were accused of practicing witchcraft, which was thought to be connected to the devil, and some were even executed. Eventually, the colony realized the faults in the trials. By reading the primary sources ‘A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft Chapter II’ by John Hale and Two Letters by Governor William Phips, we are able to discover a wealth of knowledge about the aforementioned trials. The two sources allow the reader to gain insight into how the trials were flawed by showing the nature of the Salem Witch Trials, the evidence used to find the witches guilty, and the role native americans played in the trials. While also exhibiting how primary sources can be a disadvantage in navigating through historical events.

The view that religious beliefs were behind the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 is predominantly incorrect. While the Puritan culture’s strong Christian beliefs did dictate the behaviour of New England society, for the authorities that instigated the Witch Trials, religion was a mere justification for their actions that allowed them to gain support by instilling in the masses the fear of a higher power. Their true motives lay in the political and social issues of the time, with Salem Town’s division due to two disputing families, the ever-present fear of smallpox, and the male population’s immense opposition to female independence and sexuality. Thus, while society had strong religious beliefs, they were merely a pretext for the political and social factors of family conflict, disease, and fear of women that were the true bases for the accusations dealt in 1692.

The large-scale witch-hunts that occurred from 1638 to 1651 gathered momentum via major happenings in the political, societal, and religious domains developing at the time. Individuals who had either political, religious or economic power in society, also known as elites, together had absolute control over the pursuit and prosecution of individuals who partook in witchcraft. The clergy played a crucial role in the witchcraft prosecutions and were slower than the state and localities to desert their beliefs in the reality of witches as the prosecution of witchcraft was, in their eyes, an effective tool to eradicate social deviance. Though local authorities and the Parliament did contribute to the witch-hunts significantly, without the kirk of Scotland declaring and encouraging this sanction on witchcraft, both other parties would not have taken the actions they ultimately did. This essay will provide a brief description of events that took place from 1638 to 1651 and then utilize evidence from a multitude of sources to argue that the religious elites were the most influential of these forces during the witchcraft prosecutions that occurred in the 1640s.

Although in this case (Kate Branch) the Enlightenment thought directly influenced the process of the trail, still the testimony of the women involved held less value than that of a man. Any women seen challenging the thought of a man was at a greater risk of being accused of witchcraft. Daniel Wescot and other men describe incidents involving Goody Disborough and Elizabeth Clawson. These events started with an argument between a man and a women; the man later accused the women of cursing livestock, children, or themselves by witchcraft. (Godbeer, 2005) The reason that women were accused was that they disagreed with a man’s point of view.

Were the witch-hunts in pre-modern Europe misogynistic? Anne Llewellyn Barstow seems to think so in her article, “On Studying Witchcraft as Women’s History: A Historiography of the European Witch Persecutions”. On the contrary, Robin Briggs disagrees that witch-hunts were not solely based on hatred for women as stated in his article, “Women as Victims? Witches, Judges and the Community”. The witch craze that once rapidly swept through Europe may have been because of misconstrued circumstances. The evaluation of European witch-hunts serves as an opportunity to delve deeper into the issue of misogyny.

England” by Lyle Koegler, suggests the witch trials were the direct result of women and men

Feminism has been a topic that is often side-by-side in the discussion of witchcraft, surrounding Salem, Essex County, or the greater regions of colonial New England. Women were persecuted, and undermined by the minds of the colonial men, came from ideals taken from both books. Even though Norton’s narrative represents feminist ideals, her narrative supports men that were accused. She made this known when she discusses the importance of the not before mentioned five men that were executed in Essex County. She acknowledges them in her lecture on February 9th, 2015, as “The men often left out of the story, as most historians tend to focus on the women that were murdered.” The conflict between both books are fought over the broad ideas of feminism in the seventeenth century. Both authors clearly state their beliefs, but only one in successful in presenting pure evidence to back their interpretation.

The central issue at stake for people during the Salem witch trials were a series of hearing and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft. It all started in Salem Village, in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. A man by the name of Richard Godbeer, the author of “The Salem Witch Hunt” and several other books is a professor at the University of Miami. Godbeer’s research and teaching interests center on colonial and revolutionary America. Also, his fields of interest are in gender, sex, witchcraft and religious culture.

Witch trials were at an all-time high in the 1590s, especially in Scotland, attributed to many infamous trials such as the ones in North Berwick. James was known to have held a great deal of interest in the matter of witchcraft, stemming from which historians have disagreed about, with some citing factors such as his trip to Denmark, specific witchcraft cases and other influence of popular thinkers and philosophers. It can certainly be seen that James, his interest and his influence was a major factor in witchcraft persecutions, but there is a question to how far he was responsible. This essay will look at to what extent the interest of James accounts for the witchcraft persecutions in 1590-1597.

The witch hunt craze that enveloped Europe and the New World from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries resulted in the senseless murders of countless people through horrifying methods of torture and execution, and all for seemingly no reason. Women constituted the vast majority of victims of the witch hunt craze, with up to 80% of all witchcraft victims being women (Barstow, page 7), for a wide variety of reasons that can all be traced back to one thing: the oppressive sexism that dominated the patriarchal society of early Europe. The dominant victims of witch hunt mania were female due to a combination of the oppressive roles that were forced upon women in early European society, religious persecution that was largely caused by

Levack has been criticised by Barstow because he fails to mention gender throughout his book , and therefore Levack as a historian may have taken an inaccurate approach to witchcraft as he avoided discussing gender as a factor. Thurston suggests that although the Malleus represented an ‘important strain in male attitudes towards women’, it doesn’t point to misogyny as a factor behind the witch-hunts . The extent of the Malleus’ influence is unclear due to the fact that it was printed in 1486-1520 and then 1574-1621, however the book was not reprinted during a 50 year span which included an increase in the number of witch-trials carried out. Hence, it could be argued that the Malleus wasn’t of extreme importance, due to the fact that there was an increase in witch-trials whilst the book wasn’t being printed. On the other hand, it could also be argued that the authors identified the increase in witch-trials as a reason to print the Malleus again.

There are myriads of differences when it comes to gender within the trial of Thomas and Jane Weir. Women were usually domestic workers within the household and society, doing jobs such as child-rearing, weaving, and roles of mother, sister, daughter, wife and caretaker in the community. Men were either seen as the husbands of the female witchcraft users or someone of an intense authority figure. “Sir Andrew Ramsay, Lord Abbotshall then Provost of Edinburgh” were all men with high statuses within the community in Edinburgh in which Thomas lived. Women during the time of witchcraft in Scotland came to be connected with the Devil by possession . Most men did not have carnal knowledge of the work of the Devil himself but rather with a female witch who has the connection to the Devil. Since women were seen as the prominent members of the witchcraft community, there can possibly be multiple differences between the testimony and charges laid against Jane and Thomas Weir. Thomas was charged with incest, adultery, fornications and bestiality because he laid with his sister and multiple people within the community in which he lives. His sister, Jane, was connected in the incest with her brother, and was also thoroughly prosecuted for sorcery which has an equal if not worse punishment than Thomas’ crimes. “She is also [indicted] of [Sorceries] committed by her when she lived and [kept] a school at Dalkeith. That she took employment from a Woman to speak