Legal Myths: Burning Witches at the Stake

Rev'd Prof Helen Hall, Nottingham Law School https://www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/law/helen-hall

The trope of witches being burnt at the stake in Medieval England is deeply routed in popular culture. It pops up in films, television series and books; for instance the infamous witch scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, or the explosive death of Agnes Nutter in Good Omens. However, it is misguided for two reasons. First, the majority of prosecutions for witchcraft took place during the Early Modern period (roughly late 15^th to early 19th centuries) and second, witches were hung rather than burnt.

So, where did the myth about burning come from? Primarily, the reality many other jurisdictions, including Scotland, did absolutely burn witches. It might also be relevant that burning at the stake was a sentence passed by English and Welsh courts for other offences, and there could be a gendered dimension to the punishment. It was imposed on both male and female heretics, and in that context, was understood partly as an effort to purify the soul of the condemned. Horrendous though it was as a method of execution, for people who believed in the literal and eternal flames of Hell, the practice could be seen as merciful. Whilst death by fire was truly terrible, it was brief compared to the everlasting torments that awaited those who were taken by the Devil.

Beyond the realm of heresy however, it tended to be a sentence passed on women rather than men. Male prisoners convicted of treason were hung, drawn and quartered, a fate that famously befell the surviving conspirators of the Gun Powder Plot. However, this ritual of torture and slow death was deemed inappropriate for women, because it would have meant publicly exposing their bodies. Taboos around female nudity therefore meant that women convicted of these offences were burnt at the stake instead. It is important to stress that “treason” encompassed Petty Treason as well as High Treason, so this was not something reserved for attacks upon the sovereign. Wives found guilty of killing their husbands, and female servants convicted of murdering their mistresses, were condemned to this form of capital punishment.

The link with “unnatural” women, who stepped outside of expected, and divinely appointed social order, may have associated burning at the stake with witchcraft in some minds. Whilst legislation like the Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts 1562 was facially neutral in relation to gender, in practical terms, the number of women tried vastly exceeded the number of men. Both witchcraft and burning at the stake were therefore tied to delinquent, and dangerous, female behaviour.

A further factor in the development of the legal myth might well be the rarity of witchcraft trials in England and Wales. There never was a strong culture of persecuting witches. This might partly be because the Reformation experienced in this context was driven by the monarch’s egotistical desire to divorce and remarry, rather than a tide of popular protest. The official state religion settled, somewhat awkwardly, between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and the general messiness of the process made it harder to imagine the world engaged in a binary battle between good and evil. It is no coincidence that most of the officially sanctioned witch-hunting that did occur, took place happened during the religious and political turbulence of the 17^th century, when radical Protestants were in ascendency. Generally speaking, England saw very few witchcraft trials in comparison with neighbouring states, so there was limited familiarity with the reality of the process.

Finally, there might be an element of wish fulfilment and the thrill of a lurid and violent story. Educated elites mocked beliefs in witches, and the legal system formally ended prosecutions for practising magic in 1735 (although the same piece of legislation, the Witchcraft Act 1735, made it a criminal offence to fraudulently pretend to do so). Nevertheless, ordinary people continued to fear curses and malicious spells, and sometimes attacked members of their community believed to be inflicting harm by such means. The persistent idea that you could break a hex by drawing a witch’s blood resulted in a steady stream of assaults. In a world in which the authorities laughed and refused to help, or worse still, prosecuted you for attempts at self-help, frightened people may have consoled themselves with stories of a time when evil witches got their just deserts.

For all of these reasons combined, the idea that English and Welsh witches were burnt at the stake is one of the most persistent false beliefs about the law, but it is certainly not the only one.

Related Reading

Thomas Waters, Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times (Yale University Press, 2019)

Diane Purkiss, Witchcraft: Eight Myths and Misconceptions, English Heritage https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/eight-witchcraft-myths/