History

• Witches are often depicted with cats and toads
• Witches were often single women who had nobody to protect them
• People imagined witches' Sabbath to involve potion-making in cauldrons, witches flying on broomsticks or on the backs of goats, and worshipping the Devil
• Testing the accused of witchcraft

  1. Ducking the accused under water

  2. If they floated, they were guilty, if they sank, they were innocent
• Many innocent people drowned during the witchcraft trials
• The Witchcraft Act made witchcraft a criminal offence

  1542
• Between 1542 and 1647, around 250 accusations of witchcraft came before the authorities in East Anglia
• At least 100 people were executed for witchcraft between 1645 and 1647 in East Anglia
• At least 1000 people were executed for witchcraft between 1542 and 1735 in East Anglia
• Matthew Hopkins


  A lawyer and self-proclaimed 'Witchfinder General' who was at the centre of the witchcraft accusations in East Anglia in 1645
• Matthew Hopkins named as many as 300 women as witches and collected 'evidence' against them to prove they had used harmful magic against their neighbours
• Reasons for Henry VIII's break from Rome and the start of the Church of England


  • Wanting to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon
  • The influence of Anne Boleyn
  • The rise of Protestantism
  • Wealth and power
• Henry VIII used Parliament to grant the Act of Supremacy in 1534, which allowed him to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and made the monarch the head of the English Church
• Henry VIII became romantically interested in Anne Boleyn, one of Catherine of Aragon's ladies in waiting, in 1526
• Anne Boleyn had encountered reformist ideas such as those of Martin Luther during her teenage years in France, and she was known to have had a significant influence over Henry VIII
• In the years before the break with Rome, groups of people who were attracted to Protestant ideas had begun to gather in England, and new figures such as Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer, who had Protestant sympathies, began to rise at court
• Protestant texts criticised the power and wealth of the Pope and the Catholic Church, arguing that the clergy, monks and nuns did not lead humble lives, and that diverting the wealth of the Church from Rome to Henry VIII would help him with his financial issues
• The Collectanea Satis Copiosa, or the Sufficiently Abundant Collectors, argued that Henry VIII should have the power to annul his own marriage in England
• Martin Luthers 95 theses
• catholic church: £
• Defender of the faith
• Henry was paranoid
• tyrant - a cruel ruler
• despot a ruler who abuses their power
• paranoid- unreasonably suspicious
• Usuper- a person who illegally overthrows the king
• Henry viii (1509-1547)
• renaissance prince scance
• promotes smart middle class man
• to run the govemment
• Spandthringt i
• Thomas Comwel
• Thomas Wolsey
• field of the cloth of gold
• 1st wife catherine of Aragon
• Son of
• a Son
• needs a divorce
• from Pape to
• 2nd wife Anne Boleyn