1. 1
INTRODUCTION
∞
The current interest in the connection between women and witchcraft can be traced back to
the rise of women’s history in the 1970s. This was itself, a product of the emergence of the
women’s movement in that decade. Whilst these developments were of importance, and the
arrival of women’s history in particular was vital in setting a new agenda, this did mean that
some of the early commentaries on the connection between women and history were written
from a perspective that was long on ideology and short on research. Since the 1970s, the
connection between women, witchcraft, and the role of gender in witch discourse has been
pursued from a number of angles and has still remained controversial up to today. The
instigators of the witch-hunts typically ‘asserted that the fragile feminine sex… feebler in
both mind and body’1 was sufficient enough to make the association that witches were
typically women. Scholars of witchcraft have generally therefore accepted and celebrated this
association, and since women suffered on a much vaster scale during the witch-hunts in
Europe2, such links do seem justified.
Historians of witchcraft have also, generally tended to not be very interested in the role in
which male witches have played throughout the witch-craze and have on this basis, generally
remained absent from witchcraft historiography. The aim of this dissertation is to re-evaluate
these assertions and demonstrate that the male witch deserved to be regarded as a valid
historical subject alongside women. The dissertation will be split into two sections; the first
half acknowledging that women have played an important role within the history of
witchcraft and asking questions such as; why women have dominated statistics for witchcraft,
1 Edward Bever, Witchcraft, Female Aggression, and Power in the Early Modern Community, Journal of Social
History, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Summer, 2002), p. 956.
2 In most European regions, the percentage of female witches exceeded over 75 per cent, and in a few areas,
like that of Essex, prosecutions reached heights topping 90 per cent.

2. 2
and why most historians have typically regarded the witch to be female. The second half will
attempt to unravel the phenomenon that is the male witch, and through the use of a few cases
of male witches, attempt to widen the historiography of this neglected topic and demonstrate
how in fact there wasn’t much difference between both male and female witches. The theme
of ‘economic rivalry’ which was first discussed by Elizabeth Kent in relation to male witches
will also be discussed which proposes that not all witchcraft required the involvement of
female witches as active participants. Finally, the male witch’s significance as a valid
historical subject will be evaluated and discussed for future understanding and development.

3. 3
CHAPTER ONE
The Status of Women and Witchcraft
∞
James Sharpe is not wrong to claim that one of the greatest problems facing the historian of
witchcraft is why so many people believed witches to be women and many scholars are still
divided over the issue3. One line of thought regards it as a product of clerical misogyny4,
whereas other scholars like Marianne Hester, David Underdown and Susan Amussen prefer
to view it as the product of what they refer to as ‘woman hating’5 undertaken by patriarchal
forces to subdue woman in response to fears of a ‘crisis of gender relations’6. Alternatively,
Gary Waite has suggested that the witch-hunts were merely conscious attempts on the part of
religious and secular authorities ‘to enforce widely desired religious conformity upon the
populace’7, whereas historians such as Alan Macfarlane and Keith Thomas seek an
explanation within the context of ‘village level’ society, suggesting that it was factors of
poverty and unwelcomed dependence of old women which generated sources of accusation.
The association of witchcraft and women is certainly both ancient and widespread. The
prototype of the witch in ancient and medieval culture for instance, was always that of a
female8 and one line of thought which attempts to explain why this was the case, places full
3 One must note that reasons for female persecution are not as ‘black and white’ as they may seem; one
reason to persecute a witch may not have had grounding in another region and therefore may not have been
pursued as vigorously and generated trials for witchcraft based on this reason.
4 See the work of; Clark, Thomas, Waite.
5 A term first used by Keith Thomas, See his; Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in
Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England, (Penguin Books., London, 1973),
6 A term typically associated with Marianne Hester, see her book; Lewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study
in the Dynamics of Male Domination, (Routledge., London, 1992), for further clarification.
7 Gary Waite, Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, (Palgrave Macmillan., Hampshire, 2003),
p. 89.
8 See Image 1.

4. 4
responsibility on the role of the early Christian Church ‘creating a tradition of misogyny’9
which became extremely influential throughout Europe. As John Sterne highlights in his A
Confirmation and Discovery of Witches in 1648;
‘First, from Gods Law against Witches, Exod. 22. In the feminine gender,
praestigiatricem ne sinito vivere. Secondly, from Sauls speech, when he said, Seeke
one out, a woman that hath a familiar spirit, Sam. 28 7. 1 Chron. 10 13, 14. in naming
a woman and not a man’10.
In many regards, women were more likely to be suspected of witchcraft because they were
believed to morally weaker than men and more susceptible to the Devil’s temptation. They
were viewed as more curious and loquacious, which in turn made them ‘more eager to know
things, but as a result, incapable of keeping such information to themselves’11. Many of these
ideas concerning women, developed from religious scripture, notably the precedent set by
Eve in the Garden of Eden which revealed her weakness and inability to resist the Devil.
Because of such, women were believed to possess a ‘greater facility to fail’12 and therefore to
be naturally inferior to their male counterpart. Fundamental to such beliefs were women’s
association with nature which enabled them to be depicted as wild and uncontrollable,
features which ran parallel with storms and earthquakes; capable of causing havoc and
disorder. Such imagination therefore justified the requirement for control and subordination
by men to ensure that like nature, women remained in perfect harmony.
The Importance of Binary Thinking
9 Brian Easlea, Witch Hunting, Magic and the New Philosophy: An Introduction to the Debates of the Scientific
Revolution 1450 – 1750, (The Harvester Press Limited., Sussex, 1980), p. 34.
10 John Sterne, A Confirmation and Discovery of Witches, (1648), p. 10.
11 Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, (Clarendon Press.,
Oxford, 1997),
12 James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England 1550 – 1750, (University of Pennsylvania
Press., Pennsylvania, 1997), p. 171.

5. 5
The representation of the male on the other hand was regarded positively and it was the
importance of binary oppositions like this which made it so believable that women were more
prone to be a witch. Aristotle and Aquinas claimed that the differences between men and
women ‘were built into creation itself so that there were natural roles for men and opposite
ones for women’13. Stuart Clark also regards this line of binary thinking to also be extremely
substantial when attempting to understand the association of women with witchcraft. In his
Thinking with Demons, Clark makes note of Ian Maclean’s work which demonstrated how
‘much of the scholastic framework of gender opposition remained intact in the individual
disciplines that made up late Renaissance scholarship’14 throughout Europe. The early
modern period was characterised by a ‘whole series of polar opposites’15 which would serve
as a means to establish hierarchy and distinguish differences between men and women. Since
women hadn’t devising this system, it was not surprising therefore that the female sex
‘simply ended up on the wrong side of the divide’16 and why women were much more likely
to be regarded as a witch over a man.
The Sexual Nature of the Female
Women were considered to be ‘sexual temptresses’17 who were more lustful and licentious
than men, and since the Christian Church was ‘attempting to be an ascetic religion’18 it was
impossible to forgive women for their sexual desirability. Key to their sexual wickedness ‘lay
above all, in their carnal appetites’19 which would eventually lead to man’s corruption if not
13 Susan Stuard, ‘The Dominion of Gender: Women’s Fortunes in High Middle Ages’ in Becoming Visible:
Women in European History, eds. Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan Stuard, 2nd ed. (Houghton
Mifflin., Boston, 1987), pp. 153-174.
14 Clark, p. 122., See also; Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Women: A Study in the Fortunes of
Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life, (Cambridge University Press., Cambridge,
1980),
15 Bever, p. 957.
16 Ibid.
17 Easlea, p. 33.
18 Ibid.
19 Clark, p. 133.

6. 6
subdued20. Women’s supposedly insatiable and immoral sexuality was likely to lead them
into allegiance with the Devil who could ‘fulfil their sexual desires even better than men’21.
Image 1 Hans Baldung Grien, Three Witches, (1514)22
20 Lyndal Roper has claimed that ‘older women were believed to have the power to ruin young men sexually’,
see her book; Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality, and Religion in Early Modern Europe, (Routledge.,
London, 1994), p. 208.
21 Marianne Hester, ‘Patriarchal Reconstruction and Witch Hunting’ in Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe:
Studies in Culture and Belief, eds., Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester and Gareth Roberts, (Cambridge University
Press., Cambridge, 1998), p. 295.
22 This image embodies a very typical assumption during the early modern period of the wild and
uncontrollable nature of the female who needed to be controlled and subordinated. The image al so resembles
prevalent beliefs of the time, which were discussed in misogynistic texts like the Malleus Maleficarum which
sought women to be naturally evil, lustful and sexually wicked, making them more prone to become a witch
under the Devil’s influence. It was typically older, mature women (as in the image) who were regarded to be
more deceitful and capable of ‘ruining young men sexually’. For further reading, see Lyndal Roper’s work;
Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality, and Religion in Early Modern Europe, (Routledge., London, 1994),
and Diane Purkiss’ book; The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations,
(Routledge., London, 1996),

7. 7
Aristotle’s Masterpiece, a popular handbook on sex also asserted the ‘common belief that
women obtained more pleasure from sex than men’23. Women could only be accepted by the
Church, ‘as sexless or unattainable beings’24; with the Virgin Mary being the ‘impossible
ideal for women to aspire to’25. The female was therefore regarded to be naturally lustful and
weak minded who would ultimately ‘lead to man’s corruption’26 if not subdued.
Anti-feminist thought like this was certainly not a new phenomenon in Europe during the
early modern period; with misogynist texts having being written for centuries and even
dating back to the dawn of Greek culture;
‘The lion being bitten with hunger, the bear being robbed of her young ones, the viper
being trod on, all these are nothing so terrible as the fury of a woman’27.
Alternatively, Quaife has often suggested that a reason why women were the more prominent
targets of witch-finders was because of their capabilities of reproduction, which eluded
understanding and because of this, substantially terrified the male population. In his opinion,
it was therefore a major reason why women were prosecuted for witchcraft on a mass scale.
Men shared the belief that ‘what was not understood had to be degraded in order to be
controlled’28, and it has been argued by him that women were the primary target of
persecution for this sole reason.
It was thinking like this which featured prominently within the highly misogynistic Malleus
Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer); the infamous handbook designated to identify and
23 Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, (Harper & Roe., San
Francisco, 1980), p. 133.
24 Easlea, p. 34.
25 Ibid.
26 Susan Griffin, Women and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, (Woman’s Press., London, 1984), p. 8.
27 Margaret Ezell, The Patriarch’s Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family, (University of North
Carolina Press., Carolina, 1987), pp. 46-47.
28 G.R. Quaife, Godly Zeal and Furious Rage: The Witch in Early Modern Europe, (Croom Helm., London, 1987),
p. 82.

8. 8
impeach possible witches. The authors behind the work; Sprenger and Kramer (probably the
best known of the Catholic ideologies on witchcraft29) based their understanding of why
witches were female30 on the association that women were confounded with natural
weaknesses and to be naturally devious because it was Eve and not Adam who accepted
Satan. It was such beliefs like this, which were held against women and used to advocate
aggression in the form of witch-hunting against women.
Is Witchcraft Misogynistic?
On this basis, the issue has been raised, in part at least, whether witchcraft in Europe
functioned solely as a ‘uniquely lethal form of Western misogyny’31. One of the most
important pieces of work to consider why so many witches were women was Christina
Larner’s 1981 Enemies of God, which attempted to evaluate this concept. She argues that the
stereotype of the witch within Europe was generally in most cases that of a woman, and this
fact supported claims that witch-hunting was misogynistic, and figures for the number of
females put on trial for witchcraft in relation to men reinforced such theory. In most
European regions, the percentage of female witches exceeded over 75 per cent, and in a few
areas, like that of Essex, prosecutions reached heights topping 90 per cent in favour of
women32.
From this, it can be assumed that witch persecuting was, as Joan Kelly has claimed; ‘the
single most horrendous expression of misogyny in early modern Europe’33. Individuals such
as Marianne Hester and Susan Amussen agree with this claim by suggesting that the
29 Alan Anderson & Raymond Gordon, Witchcraft and the Status of Women - The Case of England, British
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 29 No. 2 (1978), p. 173.
30 They also accepted that witches could be male too, but women were more likely because of their perceived
mental weakness which was regarded as an invitation for the Devil to take hold and influence them.
31 Jacqueline Eales, Women in Early Modern England, 1500-1700, (UCL Press., London, 1998), p. 104.
32 Hester, ‘Patriarchal Reconstruction’, p. 294.
33 Joan Kelly, Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes, 1400 – 1789, Signs: f. of Women in Culture
and Society, 8 (1982), p. 27.

9. 9
witchcraze functioned as nothing more than a process of ‘woman hating’ by European elites.
Hester is also considerably extreme in this regard by claiming that the period of witch-
hunting during the 16th and 17th centuries belonged to part of the ‘dynamics of domination’34
whereby men, within this very patriarchal period, struggled to maintain their dominance over
women. In order to evaluate the extent of this line of thinking sufficiently however, it is
important to understand the period and the context of the time in which is being dealt with.
James Sharpe within his Witchcraft and Women in Seventeenth-Century England: Some
Northern Evidence, acknowledges that it was prevalent belief amongst many of the educated
contemporaries of the time, that the ‘the millennium was at hand’35 and a consequence of this
phenomenon was the opinion that the ‘traditional, social and political hierarchies were
vulnerable to collapse’36 (represented by women’s unruly behaviour)37, demonstrating the
state of affairs which men believed38.
A similar argument is also argued by David Underdown, who within his essay; The Taming
of the Scold, argues that the persecution of female witches reflected a ‘crisis of gender
relations’39 where men felt it was their right to restore ‘neighbourliness and social harmony’40
and constrain women’s growing assertiveness. Historians like Hester regard instances
surrounding the village healer to typify such notions.
34 Marianne Hester, Lewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study of the Dynamics of Male Domination,
(Routledge., London, 1992), p. 199., See also; Trevor Roper; The European Witch-Craze of the 16th and 17th
Centuries, (Penguin., London, 1969),
35 James Sharpe, Witchcraft and Women in Seventeenth-Century England: Some Northern Evidence, Continuity
and Change (1991), 6, p. 183.
36 Ibid.
37 This allowed men to make the association that women were advocates of the Devil’s attempts to destroy
Christendom.
38 For a wider discussion, see; Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England, (Cambridge
University Press., Cambridge, 1996),
39 Garthine Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England, (Cambridge University Press.,
Cambridge, 2003), p. 101.
40 David Underdown, ‘The Taming of the Scold: The Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority’ in Order and Disorder
in Early Modern England, eds. Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson, (Cambridge University Press., Cambridge,
1986),p. 122.

10. 10
When women attempted to exert their assertiveness, through purchasing land, or owning
property and therefore ‘behaving like anomalies within the patriarchal order’41, Carol Karlsen
in The Devil in the Shape of a Man discusses such themes and claimed that this made women
far more susceptible to accusations of witchcraft because it demonstrated an act of defiance
towards the patriarchal norms within society. During the period of the witch-hunts in England
especially, the patriarchal ideal for women was that ‘they should be quiet (not scolds) and
subservient to their husbands’42. Marriage was seen as a means to subdue and control women.
Since it wasn’t believed to be within female nature to undertake such practices or possess the
actual ability to actually carry out such behaviour, it was not surprising therefore that men
became automatically suspicious and often jumped to the conclusion that the Devil was
somewhat involved encouraging women to disrupt and terrorize European communities.
How Influential was the Malleus?
On this basis therefore, the Malleus could be recognized as a highly influential work, and
since it outsold every other publication, bar the Bible and was frequently reprinted during its
tenure, it could be suggested that it did serve as a potent authority for witch-finders across
Europe, suggesting that witch-hunting did serve as a form of misogyny. However it must be
noted that such beliefs regarding women were as Stuart Clark has claimed; ‘entirely
representative of their age and culture’43, and therefore puts the claim that the Malleus was
driving a misogynistic streak throughout Europe into dispute.
Most historians have also generally regarded this as sufficient evidence to claim that the
Malleus was not as detrimental in making the witch-hunts in Europe resemble a form of
misogynistic persecution as popular conceptions. There is some suggestion as to how
41 Sharpe, Witchcraft and Women’, p. 182.
42 Hester, ‘Patriarchal Reconstruction’, p. 294.
43 Clark, p. 115.

11. 11
influential the Malleus actually was which has enabled historians to refute such a view. Stuart
Clark and James Sharpe have claimed for instance, that the misogynistic nature found within
the Malleus was not always supported and applied by witch-finders. Notably, it has also been
suggested that Kramer’s views on women were regarded to be too extreme and therefore
often ignored by his fellow inquisitors; Sharpe for instance has previously noted how his
‘obsession with sexual deviance often dismayed his fellow judges’44. Of the notorious witch-
hunting magistrates, there was no evidence to suggest that individuals like Henri Boguet and
Nicholas Remy respectably, allowed issues of gender to cloud their verdicts within cases, and
famous witchcraft experts closer to home such as James I and William Perkins arguably gave
it little attention. In 1538, the Council of the Spanish Inquisition also advised its inquisitors
not to believe everything written within the Malleus. Alexander Robert’s 1616 treatise on
witchcraft did provide a ‘standard list of female attributes which helped incline women
towards witchcraft’45, but still, at the same time, ‘far removed from the prurient fantasies of
the Malleus’46;
‘First, they are by nature credulous, wanting experience, and therfore more easily
deceiued.’
‘Secondly, they harbour in their breast a curious and inquisitiue desire to know such
things as be not fitting and couenient, and so are oftentimes intangled with the bare
shew and visard of goodnesse.’
‘Thirdly, their complection is softer, and from hence more easily receiue the
impressions offered by the Diuell; as when they be instructed and gouerned.’
44 Sharpe, Witchcraft and Women in Seventeenth-Century England, p. 180.
45 Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, pp. 170 -171.
46 Ibid., p. 171.

12. 12
Fourthly, in them is a greater facility to fall, and therefore the Diuell at the first tooke
that aduantage, and set vpon Eue in Adams absence, Genes. 3. 3.’
‘Fifthly, this sex, when it conceiueth wrath or hatred against any, is vnplacable,
possessed with vnsatiable desire of reuenge.’
‘Sixthly, they are of a slippery tongue, and full of words: and therefore if they know
any such wicked practises, are not able to hold them, but commnnicate the same with
their husbands, children, consorts, and inward acquaintance’47.
Witchcraft: A War Between Sexes?
In recent years, there has been tremendous development in attempting to understand what
Keith Thomas meant when he claimed that witchcraft of the 16th and 17th centuries resembled
a ‘war between sexes’48. One strand of this concept, which has gathered some momentum in
recent years, questions the extent of which men sought to ‘destroy the village healer who
monopolised the treatment of the ordinary peasant’49. Supporters of this view, notably;
Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English have claimed that the majority of the women
persecuted for witchcraft weren’t actually prosecuted for offences associated with this
phenomenon but for their ‘female sexuality’50. They point to lay healers serving the peasant
population, who were victimised not because they were regarded to be a witch, but because
male physicians needed to destroy their presence within the medical sphere to allow their
own practices to flourish. Such a claim is possible, since the village healer was generally a
woman51 and tended to offer cheaper rates52 in comparison to the learned male physician. It
47 Alexander Roberts, A Treatise of Witchcraft, (1616), pp. 42-43.
48 See; Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century
England, (Penguin Books., London, 1973),
49 Quaife, p. 25.
50 Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, p. 169.
51 See; Hester, ‘Patriarchal Reconstruction’.
52 Ibid.

13. 13
has also been a commonly held belief that because of their reproductive and emotional
natures, women were more profound than men to ‘activate occult powers’53 which endowed
women with ‘great potential for healing’54. Questions regarding the legitimacy of female
healers were always sought by the male profession. Since women weren’t permitted access to
university learning, it was questionable how they were so prolific in terms of their ability to
heal. It is almost certain therefore, that members of the male medical profession would have
despised being undermined by women who they regarded as they’re social inferiors. Francis
Bacon touched on the topic in his Advancement of Learning;
‘witches and old women and imposters have had a competition with physicians’ – a
competition, moreover in which ‘empirics and old women are more happy many
times in their cures than learned physicians’55.
It has therefore been presumed by individuals like English and Ehrenreich that witch-hunting
did serve as a means to support the male patriarchal order. Whether this claim is actually true
is undecided, however it would not be wrong however to accept that female healers were
susceptible to witchcraft because of the nature which surrounded their profession.
There is no doubting that the rivalry between the male and female healers during this period,
added fuels to the fire of the witchcraze. Whether men’s displeasure of being undermined by
their social inferior and subsequent attempts to undermine them was the main reason for the
greater levels of female persecution, it is questionable that it may well be. Even if it is agreed
that woman’s overall influence and position did reach a peak towards the end of the late
middle ages, and so provoked a ‘backlash affecting women of all ranks for several centuries
53 Anthony Fletcher, Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, (Cambridge University Press., Cambridge,
1985), pp. 232-233.
54 Ibid.
55 Easlea, p. 38., See also; Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, (1605),

14. 14
to come’56, the witchcraze still needs explanation as it is very difficult on this basis, to believe
that the witchcraze was fundamentally in England at least; the result of the ruling elite using
witchcraft as a means to subject women who they perceived to be threatening the social
hierarchy. Robin Briggs is in support of such notions; in his Witches and Neighbours, he
suggested that if there was a real vendetta by the elites to destroy female witches, then they
would have been apprehended and punished simultaneously. Yet, as he has demonstrated57,
this was rarely the case, with some instances taking years for an indictment to be made.
Briggs even suggested that ‘most witches were doubtless never to taken to court at all’58.
While this fact may reveal a disorganised or confined legal system, it can also demonstrate a
lack of enthusiasm from elites to wipe out the potential threat if they were willing to allow
the witch to remain in the community for so long.
Witchcraft: Considered ‘From Below’
If reasons why women tended to be more prone to accusation of witchcraft are therefore to be
understood fully, and a fruitful analysis to made, the issue must be also considered ‘from
below’; within the context of the ‘village level’ which fits with ‘classic models of witchcraft
accusation’59 first discussed by Thomas and Macfarlane in their perceptive studies of English
witchcraft. Christina Larner summarises this phenomenon up quite well;
‘The European witch, unlike her African or American-Indian counterpart, was a
transfigured creature who began her career in the farmyard as an enemy of her
56 Easlea, p. 34.
57 See; Robin Briggs, Witches & Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft, (Penguin
Books Ltd., London, 1998),
58 Alison Rowlands, Telling Witchcraft Stories: New Perspectives on Witchcraft and Witches in the Early
Modern Period, Gender and History, Vol. 10 No. 2 August 1998, p. 297.
59 Hester, ‘Patriarchal Reconstruction’, p. 290., For work on witchcraft which deals primarily with such notions,
see; Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic and Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart
England: A Regional and Comparative Study.

15. 15
neighbour, and ended it in the courts as a public person, an enemy of God and of the
godly society’60.
Any type of woman could be accused of witchcraft, but it was generally the stereotyped old
women (forming a very limited sample of their sex61) who were typically persecuted more
than any other group as poverty and exclusion from the community. John Gaule, writing in
1646 gave his interpretation of a witch;
‘every old woman with a wrinkled face, a furr'd brow, a hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a
squint eye, a squeaking voyce, or a scolding tongue, having a ragged coate on her
back, a skullcap on her head, a spindle in her hand, and a dog or cat by her side; is not
only suspected, but pronounced for a witch’62.
In practice therefore, being old and widowed generally increased the chances of a possible
accusation of witchcraft because it usually meant that that the individual (male or female)
was poor and unable to support themselves financially. Their economic position therefore
forced them to rely on the charity of their neighbours. The practice of giving aid to the less
fortunate was something that certainly wasn’t unusual within the stereotypical village
community and was generally regarded by most people as their Christian duty to help the
needy anyway. The extent of how generous individuals were willing to be, however, could be
strained especially during times of economic strain and downturn when their own prosperity
was threatened. Malcolm Gaskill has suggested that the period of 1500 -1700, when the
witchcraze was at its most ferocious, has sometimes been referred to as the’ little ice age’63.
Arguably this may have coincided with the witchcraze, or perhaps can be regarded as one of
60 Christina Larner, Enemies of God: The Witch-Hunt in Scotland, (Chatto and Windus., Oxford, 1981), p. 5.
61 Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, p. 172.
62 John Gaule, Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts, (London, 1646), p. 4-5.
63 See also; Malcolm Gaskill, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England, (Cambridge University Press.,
Cambridge, 2000), pp. 33-123.

16. 16
the causes since individuals would be less willing to part with their charity and more willing
to remove burdens upon the community.
It is not surprising therefore, that ‘the most intensive outbreaks of witchcraft generally
occurred during times of disaster’64 where home owners were being ravaged by food
shortages and price inflations themselves. Circumstances like these then put the social recluse
in a precarious position since they were fundamentally at risk from a possible accusation
from other members of the community who needed to alleviate their burden from the
struggling community.
The ensuring guilt which home owners felt when refuting a begging woman from their door
was also substantial in ensuring that a ‘fertile ground for witchcraft accusations could
develop’65. Thomas categorized this situation in to four key stages; the beggar is refused an
act of charity from a neighbour; they then coincidently suffer a form of misfortune usually in
the form of death to a child or animal; this occurrence then in the eyes of the grieving victim
is translated into an act of ‘retaliation on the part of the witch’66 in response to their rejection.
These tensions which were characteristic of village community relations were ultimately
fundamental in initiating an accusation against the begging woman.
It has been suggested therefore that the social, cultural and economic factors within village
culture were far more influential forces within this debate. James Sharpe also supports a
similar claim by regarding cases of witchcraft as products of a ‘struggle between women for
the control of female space’67 within the community, where accusations of witchcraft were
used by women as a means to degrade a rival and strengthen one’s position within the
64 Easlea, p. 36.
65 Thomas, p. 673.
66 Ibid.
67 Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, p. 182.

17. 17
community. It must be noted however in light of Clive Holmes’ article68, that ‘the machinery
in which (female witnesses) became involved, often at the instigation of men, was created,
controlled, and ultimately discarded by the magisterial and clerical elite’69. Such thinking
coincided with Robin Briggs view who agreed that the patriarchal system within England put
women under a lot of pressure to testify against other women in the hope of directing
attention away from themselves during a witch-hunt. Briggs believed susceptible women who
fitted the typical characteristics of a potential witch70 would accuse other women of
witchcraft in order to reduce ‘the risk that they might themselves be suspected’71. Holmes
meanwhile is in support of this claim and interpreted the increasing number of women
serving as testimonies in trials after 1590 as suitable evidence to suggest that witchcraft did
function to primarily subject women. The increasing number of cases involving female
witches demonstrated ‘the ways that their testimony matched elite expectations’72, and as
Holmes concluded; women’s testimony appeared to ‘acquiesce in and reinforce theories of
witchcraft developed by theologians and lawyers, which emphasized female weakness – the
greater susceptibility of women to temptation; their greater sensual depravity’73. This then
allowed him to show that women’s growing active participation in the witch trails did not
demonstrate a lessening of the female misogyny surrounding witchcraft, but rather ‘its
reinforcement through the words of those whose performance of successful womanliness
helped distance them from the charges they levelled at others’74.
68 Clive Holmes, Women, Witnesses and Witches, Past and Present, 140 (1993)., In the article, Holmes
concludes that female participation within witch-trials served as a means to reinforce the interests of elite
men in the clergy or judiciary.
69 Willem de Blécourt, The Making of the Female Witch: Reflections on Witchcraft and Gender in the Early
Modern Period, Gender & History, Vol. 12 No. 2 (July 2000), p. 295.
70 See; John Gaule, Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts, (London, 1646), p. 4-5.
71 Briggs, p. 267.
72 Erika Gasser, Manhood, Witchcraft and Possession in Old and New England, (2007), p. 31.
73 Holmes, p. 45.
74 Gasser, p. 32

18. 18
It was also much easier for women to become involved in confrontation with other members
of the community, than it was men. Sharpe has pointed out how it was much easier for
females to become involved within confrontation with other women from the result of
‘quarrels between their children’75. Women also tended to be the ‘gossips and co-ordinating
elements within the community’76 who were usually found at the centre of
discussion/association with others. This position however could place them at risk, especially
when society segmented, leaving them a greater chance of an accusation being made against
them by another because of their greater connections within the community77.
It has also been suggested that women were more susceptible to witchcraft because of their
tendency to use verbal violence in the form of cursing, opposed to physical violence78. It has
been claimed by Larner and Sharpe that this also increased women’s chances of receiving an
accusation of witchcraft because of the likely hood that it may be interpreted as a form of
cursing which could then be reinstated by another as an act of witchcraft, mistakenly. As
Thomas summarises; ‘When a bad-tongued woman shall curse a part, and death shall shortly
follow, this is a shrewd token that she is a witch’79.
The Midwife-Witch?
The belief that midwives were also more susceptible to counts of witchcraft within the village
community is also widespread. The notorious Malleus Maleficarum, which advocated
hostility towards midwives and encouraged such views throughout Europe. The association
of the midwife and the witch has also been suggested to be the result of a ‘high level of
75 Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, p. 174.
76 Ibid.
77 Such practices were quite common within the ‘typical’ village community; women were prone to accuse
other women with the aim of increasing their own status as a result by labelling other women as bad
housewives and witches.
78 See; Hester, ‘Patriarchal Reconstruction’, p. 298.
79 Thomas, p. 512.

19. 19
abortion and still births’80. Advocates of such notions, notably; Margaret Murray have
suggested that their role as midwives within communities put them at considerable risk of an
accusation of witchcraft from grieving parents not thinking straight when a tragedy such as a
miscarriage or a premature death of a child occurred. Lyndal Roper has also claimed that
since the midwife was believed to possess the ‘motive of envy’81 it made accusing them of
witchcraft much more viable that a successful charge will be made. Midwives were therefore
easy targets, and as Sharpe highlights; ‘the theme of the child as victim of witchcraft recurs
constantly’82 within the historiography of witchcraft, the last witch to be convicted of
witchcraft; Jane Wenham was accused of bewitching a child83. What such happenings also
demonstrate again is that women were not only at risk from potential accusation as a result of
their profession, but also because of the ‘inter-generation-conflicts between women’84. David
Harley however, is very dismissive of Margaret Murray for proposing such a view, believing
the association between the midwife and the witch was in fact a myth; a stereotype founded
on little evidence which ‘passed straight from the works of demonologists into the works of
historians with barely a glancing impact on the lives of real midwives’85.
On this basis, it has been demonstrated that there are a wide range of different interpretations
as to why the female witch is more substantial when one thinks of witchcraft. The following
chapter will demonstrate that the female witch is not as substantial or dominant within the
historiography of witchcraft as typical concepts regard and introduce the male witch as an
important phenomenon which has the potential to rival its counterpart in this regard.
80 David Harley, Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife-Witch, Social History of Medicine, Vol.
3, Issue 1, No. 3 (1990),
81 Roper, p. 214. Midwives possessed a motive to kill another’s child through jealousy and malicious intent
because they themselves were traditionally, old, widowed and unable to have their own children.
82 Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, p. 176.
83 For further information, see; J. B. Kingsbury, The Last Witch of England, Folklore, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Sep., 1950),
84 Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, p. 176.
85 Harley is adamant that the midwife was the wrong ‘type’ of person to receive an accusation of witchcraft
because in reality, they were more likely to be respect and influential individuals within their local
communities, opposed to resemblances of the ‘typical witch’ which Thomas and Macfarlane have discussed.

20. 20
CHAPTER TWO
The Male Witch: A Re-Evaluation
∞
Historians of witchcraft have not been generally very interested in male witches and have
allowed them to remain inadequately excluded from witchcraft historiography. Yet
throughout Europe, the male witch actually compromised for ‘20 to 25 per cent of the total
number of executed witches’86 and equated for almost a quarter of all those accused of
witchcraft. The fact that around 20 per cent of the suspects prosecuted for witchcraft were not
women, suggests as Larner claimed, that the witch-hunts were actually ‘gender related, not
gender specific’87. In some European states, ‘the number of men prosecuted was equal to or
even greater than that of women’88; casting further doubt upon generalisations historians have
made, as well as the ‘typical’ model of witchcraft89 discussed by Macfarlane and Thomas.
86 Laura Apps & Andrew Gow, Male Witches in Early Modern England, (Manchester University Press.,
Manchester, 2003), p. 26.
87 A term first used by Larner, see her work; Enemies of God: The Witch-Hunt in Scotland, (Chatto and Windus.,
Oxford, 1981), for related discussions.
88 Brian Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, (Longman., London, 1987), p. 124.
89 See Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic’,

21. 21
Table 1 Witchcraft Prosecutions by Sex90
Place: Dates: Female: Male: % Male:
Bishopric of
Basel
1571 – 1670 181 9 5
Hungary 1520 – 1777 1, 482 160 10
Essex Co.,
England
1560 – 1602 158 24 13
SW Germany Pre – 1627 580 88 13
New England 1620 – 1725 89 14 14
Scotland 1560 – 1709 2, 208 413 16
Norway 1551 – 1760 c. 690 c. 173 20
SW Germany Post – 1627 470 150 24
Venice 1550 – 1650 714 224 24
S. Sweden 1607 – 1683 77 25 25
Fribourg 1450 – 1729 103 59 36
Zeeland 1450 – 1729 19 11 37
Pays de Vaud 1539 – 1670 62 45 42
Finland 1520 – 1699 325 316 49
Burgundy 1580 – 1642 76 83 52
Estonia 1520 – 1729 77 116 60
Normandy 1564 – 1660 103 278 73
Iceland 1625 – 1685 10 110 92
It is clear that a substantial amount of evidence has to be ignored if one was to still regard
witchcraft to be sex-specific and men should be recognized for the role that they have played
within the European witch trials, yet in most historical accounts however, they simply are
not91. Typically, there is little room in the research agenda of witchcraft for the male witch,
and their presence has generally been downplayed by historians, even though their
significance can be clearly demonstrated by Table 1. Apart from a few examples92, articles
and essays devoted specifically with the intention to broaden the historiography on male
90 Taken from; Apps & Gow, Male Witches in Early Modern England, p. 45., Male witchcraft is substantial in its
own right, yet is often ignored by historians of witchcraft. Female witches were not always the dominant
victims across the whole of European as Table 1 demonstrates. Regions such as Burgundy and Estonia even
experienced a greater male to female ratio of witches, undermining typical conceptions of the male witch’
significance.
91 Notable historians who focus primarily on women within their include Keith Thomas, Alan Macfarlane, G.R.
Quaife.
92 Notably Male Witches in Early Modern Europe, (Manchester University Press., Manchester, 2003), by Apps &
Gow contains some examples of men who were accused of witchcraft during the early modern period.

22. 22
witchcraft are far and few between. When men are mentioned in connection with witchcraft,
academics have tended to find it very difficult to accept their association. G.R. Quaife for
instance, has seemingly explained male witches away as ‘the political opponents of
prosecutors; as cunning men; or as relatives of female suspects’93, and therefore has not
provided them with the respect they deserve as their own entity within the historiography of
witchcraft. Marianne Hester meanwhile has also been guilty of ‘barely mentioning male
witches’94 at all within her research95. Alternatively, historians such as Levack have signified
the existence of the male witch based on the result of trials conducted by individuals like
Mathew Hopkins, who caused the trials to spiral out of control and allow ‘the stereotype of
the witch to break down’96, thus engulfing many persons (like men) who didn’t usually
conform to the ‘traditional model’ of witchcraft97. But in reality, male witches do deserve a
greater level of attention than what the historiography of witchcraft actually provides them
credit for. Apart from a few exceptions, most modern scholars have identified the witch to be
female98, and have ‘not been prepared to recognise male witches as valid historical subjects
of the same importance as female witches’99.
The fact that this is the case is quite unusual since there was no grounding within the
definition of witchcraft which stated that the witch had to be female, or any suggestion which
proposed that a male could not practice harmful magic, associate himself with the Devil, or
attend a Sabbath with other witches. Men were believed to be as vulnerable to temptations of
93 Apps & Gow, p. 46.
94 Ibid., p. 47.
95 See also; Marianne Hester, Lewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study in the Dynamics of Male Domination,
(Routledge., London, 1992),
96 Levack, p. 125.
97 It must be noted however that Robin Briggs has demonstrated from his study of the Duchy of Lorraine tha t
there was a significantly large number of male witches (28 per cent) despite only having one concentrated
episode of large-scale panic,. See; Robin Briggs, The Witches of Lorraine, (Oxford University Press., Oxford,
2007),
98 This is not exclusiveto female historians however; there are many male scholars too who participate in this
exclusion.
99 Apps & Gow, p. 48.

23. 23
witchcraft (and therefore as likely to practice it) as women were. As the witchcraft sceptic
John Gaule observed in his Select Cases of Conscience of 1646,
‘a Witch is for the most part rendred in the Foeminine gender; and there are many
proverbs like that of the Rabines, More women, more Witches. The reason hereof is
rendred variously, from the Sexes Infirmity, Ignorance, Impotence of passions and
Affections melancholy, solitarinesse, timorousnesse, credulity, inconstancy. But let
not the Male bee boasting, or secure of their Sexes Exemption or lesse disposition’100.
Contemporary historians such as Malcolm Gaskill have also claimed that there was no
mention within classical scripture or law which stated that a witch could not be a man, and
that ‘Protestant clergymen writing about witchcraft between the 1590s and 1640s insisted that
men were far from immune’101. Meanwhile, Apps & Gow within their Male Witches in Early
Modern Europe make note of a case of witchcraft where the language used to describe a male
witch; John Samond, was distinctively feminine102, demonstrating that ‘if English people
believed that there was an essential distinction between male and female witches, this is not
reflected in their legal language’103. It must be questioned therefore that if the witch wasn’t
predisposed to be female then why most scholars of witchcraft have automatically regarded
the witch to be female.
100 John Gaule, Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts, (London, 1646), p. 52.
101 Malcolm Gaskill, ‘Masculinity and Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century’ England in Witchcraft and
Masculinities in Early Modern Europe, (ed.), Alison Rowlands, (Palgrave Macmillan., Hampshire, 2009), p. 173.
102 The language used to describe Samond was the same of which was used to describe a woman; Margery
Stanton, at the 1579 Chelmsford Lent sessions. He was referred to as a ‘common enchanter’ during his trial; a
term which was distinctively used in reference to female witches.
103 Apps & Gow, p. 50.

24. 24
Image 2 Male and Female witches cooking dead infants. Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum,
(1608)104
While such examples may not reflect a ‘typical’ pattern of male witchcraft which can be held
account for all male witches as a whole, their appearance must be noted in order to widen the
‘picture’ of the male witchcraft historiography. One way this can be achieved is through the
use of specific case examples to enhance and broaden the understanding of this phenomenon.
Male Witches as Primary Targets?
One suggestion as to why the female has been perceived to be more substantial within
witchcraft historiography is because of the assumption made by historians that male witches
were secondary targets who were less significant and only got accused because of their
association with a female witch. Both Quaife and Owen Davies agree with this statement by
104 Taken from; Apps & Gow, Male Witches in Early Modern England, p. 111., Statistics demonstrate that both
male and female witches are both important entities within the historiography of witchcraft, despite popular
conceptions claiming otherwise.

25. 25
seemingly explaining away the existence of male witches as merely ‘relatives of female
suspects’105 or as ‘husbands and sons of female witches’106 who were accused of witchcraft
because of their social ties to ‘primary’ female transgressors’107. Both Apps & Gow however
are critical of historians making such a claim and use the example of John Samond; an Essex
beer-brewer who was charged with; ‘Bewitching with fatal consequences John Graunte and
Bridget Pecocke’108. His case is automatically significant therefore because he was suspected
of witchcraft independently and without the assistance of a female counterpart, demonstrating
that a man could be seen to be responsible for committing an act of witchcraft individually of
their female associates.
Elizabeth Kent from her study of male witches in Essex109 also helps to undermine this
typical perception of male witches as secondary forces. Her investigations into the Essex
indictments demonstrated how, out of the ‘thirty-five men prosecuted for witchcraft at the
assize… twenty-seven were either accused with men or by themselves’110, (with another
thirty three men prosecuted in non-assize courts), which can imply that historians like Quaife
were wrong in their claim that men must be reliant on women to be accused of witchcraft, or
demonstrating that in Essex at least, cases of witchcraft did not develop primarily because of
the role of the female within the proceedings.
Alternatively, John Palmer’s appearance within the court records provides some more
valuable grounding in helping to reshape how male witches are perceived. His appearance
however, is more fundamental than Samond’s because in his case, he acted alone, but also, as
105 Ibid., p. 46.
106 Owen Davies, Popular Magic: Cunning Folk in English History, (Hambledon Continuum., London, 2007),
107 Jane Kamensky, Talk Like a Man: Speech Power and Masculinity in Early New England, Gender and History
8: 1, 1996, p. 35.
108 Ibid., p. 49.
109 Masculinity and Male Witches in Old and New England, 1593 – 1680, History Workshop Journal, Vol 60,
(2005),
110 Elizabeth Kent, Masculinity and Male Witches in Old and New England, 1593 – 1680, History Workshop
Journal, Vol 60, (2005), p. 71.,See also; Anne Llwellyn Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European
Witch Hunts, (Pandora., San Francisco, 1995),

26. 26
the chief instigator of witchcraft, influencing others, notably Elizabeth Knott to assist him in
his malefic deeds;
‘this I account his prime pranck that he notoriously seduced Elizabeth Knott his
kinswoman, to consort with him in his villany who hath assented to him more
especially in the death of one Goodwife Pearls of Norton’111.
This is substantial because not only does it show that men were capable of committing acts of
witchcraft independently, but also able behave like the true villain by influencing others to
assist him and act as the pivotal driving force behind the witchcraft112. It was traditionally
women (because of their feminine nature), and not men who were regarded to be the true
villains where witchcraft was concerned. As John Gaule suggested in his Select Cases of
Conscience of 1646;
‘the fittest subject or matter for him here to worke upon, are women commonly: And
therefore a Witch is for the most part rendred in the Foeminine gender’113 who were
more suitable because of their ‘froward nature, a feeble Sex, an impotent age, an
illiterate Education, a melancholy constitution, and a discontented condition: hee now
workes further (and for his speciall purpose) to blinde the understanding more and
more, to deprave the will, to inordinate the affections, to perturb the passions, to
possesse the interiour, and delude the exteriour senses: and so infusing execrable
suggestions, of murmuring against God, and desire of Revenge against Man’114.
Another individual who is important in such regards is Arthur Bill who was according to
court records; ‘a wretched poore Man, both in state and mind’, was accused for; ‘bewitching
111 The Divel's Delusions or a faithful relation of John Palmer and Elizabeth Knott, two notorious witches lately
condemned at the sessions of Oyer and Terminer in St Albans, (1649), p. 4.
112 Karin Amundsen has suggested that ‘male witches were often specific,rather than accidental players in the
witch-hunts’.
113 Gaule, p. 52.
114 Ibid.

27. 27
Dieuers kinds of cattle’, and ‘bée of an euill life and reputation, together with his father and
mother’115. Such characteristics are similar to the typical representations of female witches; in
the same regard as practicing malefic magic in order to kill and to be publicly known and
feared for it. Bill also demonstrated that male witches could also behave in a similar fashion
to their counterparts, especially ‘poor men with little ‘individual sovereignty’116 by falling ‘to
the same delusion’117 of being a witch;
‘hee had thrée Spirits to whom hée gaue thrée speciall names, the Diuell himselfe sure
was godfather to them all, The first hée called Grissill, The other was named Ball, and
the last Iacke, but in what at shapes they appeered vnto him I cannot learne. For
Diuels can appéere both in a bodily shape, and vse spéech and conference with
men’118.
Male Witchcraft: Of a Less Serious Nature?
Within the historiography of witches, scholars have also tended to make a distinction between
the perceived type of witchcraft which male and female witches were more likely to practice
and be accused of, in order to qualify male witches as less-significant. On the basis of Kent’s
findings once again, it was demonstrated that women were primarily associated with acts of
maleficium - to cause harm and injury to another. This type of witchcraft associated with the
female was deemed to be more serious and was therefore ‘usually punished by execution’119,
offering further insight as to why women were more likely to be executed as a witch in
comparison to their male counterpart.
115 The witches of Northampton-shire Agnes Browne. Ioane Vaughan. Arthur Bill. Hellen Ienkenson. Mary
Barber (1612), p. 7.
116 Gaskill, ‘Masculinity and Male Witches’, p. 177.
117 Ibid.
118 The witches of Northampton-shire, p. 18.
119 Ibid.

28. 28
Men on the other hand were generally more likely to perform non-malefic witchcraft such as
‘using evil spirits in order to find the whereabouts of hidden treasure’120, and were therefore
‘rarely feared by his neighbours as a source for harmful magic’121. Notably, Elizabeth I’s
personal tutor and assistant, John Dee, was believed to possess the ability to discover hidden
treasure by ‘exploiting the laws of sympathy and antipathy’122. Eva Labouvie has suggested
that male magic was believed to be ‘more practical and tied to the reality of everyday life’123
because it was associated with the male’s labour role as a breadwinner for the family who’s
responsibly was to maintain the preservation of the family, maintaining livestock, the family
agriculture. Men were therefore not associated with acts of Maleficium which caused death,
but rather that of ‘harvest and weather spells’124 which were of a less serious nature and
unlikely to be executed for it. It is therefore probable that such acts of ‘positive’ witchcraft125,
which claimed to offer a practical benefit were more than likely to have been encouraged and
legitimated, rather than opposed by the authorities because of the potential gains which were
potentially achievable with the witch’s capabilities; notably John Lambe claimed to offer a
service which could ‘find lost goods, provide advice in family troubles, and foretell the
future’126, and such an example can demonstrate further why men were less likely to be
prosecuted for witchcraft. Acts typically committed by men were deemed to be of a less
serious nature (non-malefic) and therefore if committed, unlikely to carry the death penalty.
Such a claim can be supported by Swale & McLachlan’s evidence:
120 Kent, p. 71.
121 Ibid.
122 Thomas, p. 280., It must be noted however that elite magic was legitimated and shouldn’t really be
discussed in relation to ‘popular’ forms of witchcraft.
123 Alison Rowlands, ‘Not the Usual Suspects’? Male Witches, Witchcraft, and Masculinities in Early Modern
Europe’, in Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe, (ed.), Alison Rowlands, (Palgrave Macmillan.,
Hampshire, 2009), p. 8.
124 Ibid., For a greater understanding of such issues, see; Eva. Labouvie, ‘Men in Witchcraft Trials: Towards a
Social a Social Anthropology of ‘Male’ Understandings of Magic and Witchcraft’, in Gender in Early Modern
German History, (ed.), U. Rublack, (Cambridge University Press., Cambridge, 2002),
125 This notion again links very well with Maclean’s concept of ‘binary thinking’ where the male was always
associated with a positive strand; the female the negative.
126 Ewen C. L'Estrange, Witchcraft and Demonianism, (AMS Press., New York, 1984), p. 202.

29. 29
‘In the Home Circuit witch trials, a little over half of all female suspects were
acquitted, whilst over two-thirds of male suspects were acquitted, and ‘over 25 per
cent of all female suspects were executed, in comparison to only 14 per cent of the
male population’127.
In contrary to this however, C. L’estrange Ewen’s examination of the witchcraft crimes on
the Home Circuit trials demonstrated a broad similarity between those against women and
men. Out of the 206 indictments between 1564 and 1663 (14 involved men), c.180 women
were found guilty of malefic offences (88 per cent), whereas out of the male witches
examined, eight of the fourteen indicted (57 per cent) involved the use of malefic witchcraft,
either to kill or harm another person or animal128.
The inclusion of anomalies like John Samond, into the proceedings also demonstrate that the
gendering of witchcraft is not actually that clear cut as some historians make it out to be, and
capable of adding ‘shades of grey to the black-and-white contrariety of old fashioned gender
studies’129. Samond for instance was indicted for practicing an act of maleficium after
‘bewitching to death two cows’130 belonging to a neighbour, and ‘murdering a woman by
witchcraft’131 - acts which was typically associated with the female witch according to Kent.
John Lambe meanwhile was known to possess the capabilities to; ‘doe strange things, as
intoxicate, poison, and bewitch any man so as they should be disabled from begetting of
127 McLachlan & Swales, p. 357.
128 These statistics are drawn from; Ewen L’Estrange, Witch Hunting and Witch Trials: The Indictments for
Witchcraft from the Records of 1373 Assizes held for the Home Circuit A.D. 1559-1736, (Frederick Muller Ltd.,
London, 1971), pp. 102-106.
129 Gaskill, ‘Masculinity and Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century England’, p. 180.
130 Apps & Gow, p. 51.
131 Ibid.

30. 30
children’132. The practice of witchcraft typical of these instances were in most cases, regarded
to be feminine.
The case of John Palmer meanwhile is again significant in relation to this phenomenon. Like
Samond, Palmer was found guilty of associating himself with the Devil in order to cause
physical harm against another. Unusually however, Palmer instead of acting as a servant to
Devil, it seems in this case was believed to have associated himself with the Devil in order to
advance his own intellectuals; ‘impatent to be coop’t up within the narrow cantling of his
own itellectuals… he will make well what the Devil can do for his advancement in
knowledge’133. This is quite significant because in many ways, it demonstrated how the
authorities regarded Palmer to be in some way, subordinate to other fellow female witches by
acting in this manner of using the association to assist his own needs, not the other way
around. Palmer saw the Devil as a means to benefit himself, advance his magical capabilities
for instance, where as in typical female cases, it was usually the Devil being the directing
influence, issuing instructions for the female witch to undertake.
Economics as a means to defeat an accusation?
The social status of witchcraft has also been fundamental in allowing historians to
‘understand the social matrix’134 that produced accusations of witchcraft. Using Kent’s
evidence again, it can show how the ‘typical’ female witch generally ‘came from the lowest
ranks of society’135, whereas the male witch was typically of a greater status and wealth136.
Two cases involving wealthy males; Nicholas Stockdale and William Godfrey demonstrate,
132 A briefe description of the notorious life of Iohn Lambe otherwise called Doctor Lambe. Together with his
ignominious death (1628), p. 5.
133 The Divel's Delusions or a faithful relation of John Palmer and Elizabeth Knott, p. 2
134 Kent, p. 74.
135 Ibid.
136 From the figures which Kent examined, it was noted that 58% of the men accused of witchcraft were from
high ranked professions; performing roles as artisans and yeomen, with 3.5% of the figure also consisting of
gentlemen.

31. 31
how being of wealthy status provided greater means to ‘redress the vile slander perpetrated
upon ones name and reputation’137 through the engagement of a ‘lengthy, expensive and
strategic use of the early modern legal system’138. If one was to move away from cases of
‘village level’ witchcraft to cases of elite witchcraft; ‘astrologers, alchemists and learned
magicians were almost always male’139, on most occasions, the individual in question would
more often than not, be able to use their wealth and status to escape punishment. An
individual who fits the criteria well is John Lambe; an English astrologer who served George
Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham during the early 17th century and was able to because of
his high associations. In contrast to individuals like Lambe, poor, widowed women found at
the depths of society, who found themselves accused of witchcraft were almost certain to not
possess the resources or the support available to them (like Bill) to allow for a sufficient
defence to be orchestrated, and were therefore more at risk of being found guilty of witchcraft
and punished. This evidence suggests that a reason why men are thought of less in terms of a
viable subject within witchcraft agenda is because of their ability (and means available to
them) to defend themselves from accusation and not be regarded as a witch.
In contrary to this belief however, the case of John Lowes is sufficient to demonstrate that
such views were not always uniform amongst all cases of male witches. Lowes was a church
minister of wealthy status, from the town of Brandeston, Suffolk, who was accused by his
neighbours and parishioners of witchcraft. Typically, the actions of Lowes were not that
different from John Winnick; a poor servant in husbandry who attempted to seek out the help
of a cunning man to assist him, through his magical capabilities, to help him find his lost
money which he had seemingly misplaced by accident. Both individuals were charged with
having practiced magic but Lowes’ actions were deemed to be of a much serious nature in
137 Kent, p. 74.
138 Ibid.
139 See; Deborah Willis, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England,
Cornell University Press.,Ithaca,1995),

32. 32
comparison to Winnick, simply because of the fact that he was a ‘privileged figure motivated
not by want but sheer wickedness’140. It was the belief that for men to use magic was
demonstrative of a failure of their masculinity141 and since Lowes was resorting to use magic
to assist him with daily life when because of his privileged position he didn’t need to; he was
dealt with much more seriously.
Individuals like Lowes demonstrate that such assertions regarding the male sex, do not
operate neatly along gendered lines, and it must be accepted that there were also men who
didn’t fit in with the Kent’s assumption that ‘male witchcraft was a crime of the more
substantial men’142. The case of Arthur Bill for instance, who was; ‘a wretched poore Man,
both in state and mind,’143 who was representative of an old widowed female who was unable
to defend herself , who also fitted many of the typical characteristics of a female witch and
contrasts with such assumptions that male witches were wealthy and of high status.
Economics: The Driving Force Behind Male Witchcraft?
On this basis therefore, it has also been suggested that factors of economic rivalry within the
community were of substantial force where male witchcraft is concerned. As Kent has
suggested, witchcraft was a crime of the ‘more substantial men’144, and based on her
assumptions, it was typically wealthy, substantial men opposed to male resemblances of
stereotypical female witches who were old and dependant, who were accused of witchcraft.
Within her article; Masculinity and Male Witchcraft in England, Kent makes note Nicholas
Stockdale who was brought to trial in response to allegations that he had ‘murdered Thomas
Skippon by witchcraft in 1595, and in 1602 caused the deaths of Mary Skippon and Margaret
140 Gaskill, ‘Masculinity and Witchcraft’, p. 179.
141 See Kent and Gasser for a more detailed analysis on the concept of ‘failing masculinity’.
142 Kent, p. 71.
143 The witches of Northampton-shire, p. 14.
144 Kent, p. 71.

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Headon’145. The fact that he was accused of doing so by other members of the community is
typical of a general case of witchcraft. However what distorts this reality is the fact that all
the allegations made against him were done so by men. This is quite substantial, because the
historiography of witchcraft has typically been perceived to almost always involve women in
some regard;
‘The whole business deciding if an individual was a witch or if an individual act constituted
witchcraft, how witchcraft should be coped with and how suspicions should be handled seem
overwhelmingly to have been a matter which operated, initially at least, within the female
sphere’146.
In this case of Stockdale however, it was men who were the significant accusers and
demonstrated how men could be the active accusers of witchcraft instead of women. Kent
regarded this situation to be the product of what she regarded as a ‘chronic masculine
conflict’ which Stockdale experienced with his neighbours over certain issues involving the
breaching of land which ‘disrupted corporate, economic expectations’147.
Fundamentally, Stockdale was disliked because of his ‘overtly self-interested, individualistic,
ambivalent approach to economic life’148, and it is probably of no coincidence therefore that
he was accused of witchcraft as a means of attack by those who disliked him. As historians
have suggested, witchcraft was often regarded as a weapon of the weak, and like in relation to
Stockdale’s case, it was used as a means by others to diminish the status and wealth of an
individual like Stockdale who would have been otherwise untouchable because of their
economic position and status.
145 Ibid., p. 74.
146 Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, p. 182.
147 Kent, p. 74.
148 Ibid., p. 75.

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In a very similar fashion, Malcolm Gaskill highlights the appearance of William Godfrey
who in many regards shares some similar characteristics to that of Stockdale, in the sense that
he was a wealthy who ‘enjoyed a standard of living higher than most men of his rank’149 as a
farmer and landlord and like Stockdale, his accusation of witchcraft was also defined on the
basis of economic rivalry. His case also is similar with Stockdale’s in the sense that his
accusation was also likely to have been fashioned on the basis of economics.
In many regards, Godfrey didn’t fit the typical pattern of an accusation of witchcraft. He
experienced living in a comfortable background and spent his time within his community as a
‘juror and ratepayer’150. He wasn’t under any obligation to anyone else, and wasn’t
problematic or marginalized within his community like an old, widowed beggar would
probably have been. In this sense, it is substantial when examining this phenomenon that
individuals like Godfrey and Stockdale were men who were of relatively high status
(compared to the typical perception of a witch) and economically well off to the extent of
which they weren’t a burden on the community yet they were still susceptible to accusations
of witchcraft, supporting the claim that his accusation was firmly based on an economic
tendency, opposed to actual fears of him being a witch.
Both Stockdale and Godfrey stand out the stereotype most familiar to historians of witchcraft
of being the elderly, marginal widow who was dependant on charity but both still very much
likely to be a victim of witchcraft if one was determined to make them so. it is ultimately
economics which is a recurring theme when distinguishing fundamental differences between
male and female witches on this basis, and the question must be asked whether issues of
economics like this which were regarded to be driving the cases of Godfrey and Stockdale is
149 Malcolm Gaskill, The Devil in the Shape of a Man: Witchcraft, Conflict and Belief in Jacobean England,
Historical Research Vol 71, Issue, 175 (1998), p. 151.
150 Ibid., p. 158.

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it sufficient to disregard the influence of the male witch as an important entity within
witchcraft historiography.

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CONCLUSION
∞
Within the historiography of witchcraft, there have been very few analyses made with the
intention to discuss and evaluate the male witch151, as a competent entity within witchcraft
historiography. This is something which this dissertation has ultimately attempted to amend.
Throughout the course of this study, the main purpose has been to evaluate and generate
further discussion in relation to the male witch and their significance as a valid historical
subject within the phenomenon of witchcraft. This task was ultimately not going to be easy
and in many regards is not complete. However for a thesis of this magnitude to be answered
to the best of its capabilities, it would have required a far more thorough investigation, with
more research/use of sources, than what the length of this dissertation is willing to provide.
Typically, the female witch has always been laden with gender-political meaning that any
attempt to get her to share the starring role at historiographical centre stage is difficult. This is
partly down to the fact that more females were prosecuted for witchcraft than men, and
historians have tended to regard the male witch as less important in comparison to their
female counterpart because of this reason. Feminist accounts have also tended to regard
females as more significant entities at least when in reference to how witch-hunting
developed; Hester notably regarding the concept of ‘hating women’ being one of these which
classifies women as the driving force behind witch trials.
However, examples like this have been adequately undone within this thesis (if one was to
use the example of Arthur Bill for instance) who was accused, convicted and prosecuted in
the same manner as a ‘typical’ female witch can undermine conceptions like this. More
151 Apart from perhaps, Apps & Gow’s study.

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importantly, it shows that male witches are also important and can be considered as
significant forces where witchcraft is concerned on the basis as women are.
By widening perceptions of the male witch, and providing more grounds for historians in the
future to interpret the phenomenon of male witchcraft slightly differently to previous
conceptions (in terms of economics being substantial in men receiving an accusation), it can
hopefully provide a greater emphasis to re-evaluate modern conceptions of how the male
witch has typically been regarded, and demonstrate that there is room for future research to
be made into study (possibly in relation to a study using cases outside of England).
The male witch is vitally important in helping to broaden the horizon of the witchcraft
phenomenon, Apps & Gow caught the jest of this idea when they said; ‘Like Stuart Clark’s
demons, male witches, it turns out, are surprisingly ‘good to think with’152. It is arguably
backward of our time to only appreciate one side of the view (by suggesting that women are
the only important entity). Ultimately, history is not about looking at one thing through a
microscope but examining the wider picture. This is what historians of today should be trying
to achieve.
152 Apps & Gow, p. 158.