Why did people believe in witches? (1485 to 1710)

Transcription

1 History Home Learning Task Year 8 Why did people believe in witches? (1485 to 1710) Name Tutor Group Teacher Given out Monday 19 February Hand in Monday 26 February Parent/Carer Comment Staff Comment Target

2 TASK 1 (BRONZE) Draw a witch in the box at the bottom of this page. Ask members of your family or friends - to draw their own witch without looking at yours. Compare the pictures you have drawn. What similarities are there in your pictures? Why did you draw your pictures like that? Where did you get your ideas of what witches look like? My picture of a witch

3 TASK 2 - Multiple choice questions (BRONZE) Have you ever watched the BBC TV programme QI? On QI questions are asked about things which most people think they know the answer to because they have been taught to believe it, e.g. What colour is the planet Mars? Most people would say red, when really it is a butterscotch colour. Anyway, we are going to ask you some questions which most people think they know the answer to about witchcraft. They are multiple choice so choose carefully. Question (a) What did people used to do when someone was found guilty of witchcraft? 1. Burn them? 2. Hang them? 3. Drown them? Question (b) How were most people found guilty or accused of witchcraft? 1. Ducking stools guilty if floated, innocent if sank? 2. Moles on their skin? 3. Rumours spread about them in the local pub? Question (c) Which King or Queen had the largest number of people accused of witchcraft during their reign? 1. Bloody Mary (Mary I)? 2. Queen Elizabeth I ( Good Queen Bess )? 3. King James I? Question (d) Who could be accused of witchcraft? 1. Only women? 2. Children? 3. Women and men?

4 TASK 3 - Analysing a piece of evidence from the past (SILVER) The Hanging of Witches in 1571 probably York or Chelmsford hangings. Look carefully at this picture. What do you think is happening in the picture? (Try to explain what is happening at points A, B, C and D is there anything which shocks you about the picture? Why is money changing hands?) Try to come up with 5 questions that you would like to know the answer to relating to this picture

5 TASK 4 - Thinking skills: How have our thoughts about life changed? (GOLD) Why Did People Believe In Witches in the past? Try to write a modern or practical explanation for these things witches were accused of in the 1500s to 1600s Accusation The witch made my beer go sour! The witch cursed us and put a spell on my child to make it ill. Modern or practical explanation Perhaps the person let air into the barrel which made it go sour. The young pretty witch possessed my husband with the devil and made him leave me! The witch who owns the farm next door made our corn field rot. I have had pains in my stomach for days it s the witch that did it to me! That witch looked at our church tower yesterday and cursed then it fell down in the night. When I lit my fire to burn some rubbish she said hello to me and the fire suddenly grew she must be a witch.

6 TASK 5 - Numeracy & thinking skills. Use the graph to help you complete the following activities and answer the following questions. 1. BRONZE - Colour in the areas on the graph with the 3 highest numbers of indictments and the areas with the 3 lowest numbers of indictments choose different colours for each. 2. SILVER - In which decade were the most indictments? 3. SILVER - In which decade were the least indictments? 4. GOLD - Using the information given, explain why more people were indicted in some decades compared with others.

7 Why Were People Prepared to Believe in Witches? Before witches could be hanged there had to be laws which stated that witchcraft was a crime. During the Middle Ages witches were put on trial in the church courts, but the punishments were light and they were never put to death. In fact, very few witches were punished at all. It was during the reigns of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, such as Henry VIII, that harsh laws were passed against witchcraft, as laws and courts became more closely linked to the King or Queen of the time. People were very passionate about their religious beliefs and many took their religion and new translations of the Bible literally especially Protestants. The Bible mentioned witches and of course anyone going against the Bible would be seen as being in league with the devil. During Henry VIII s reign The King suspected that witches were involved in plots to kill him. Henry VIII helped to start the witch craze by making laws which said witchcraft existed and witches should be burnt. In 1542 a law was passed which stated that witches should be punished by death. This law was repealed when Henry died in Henry even had one of his own wives accused and found guilty of witchcraft Anne Boleyn. She was beheaded maybe believing in witchcraft had its uses even for Kings! In 1547 Henry s laws were scrapped resulting in fewer executions during King Edward VI and Bloody Mary s reigns. During Elizabeth I s reign Elizabeth was a Protestant. Protestants persuaded the Queen that tougher laws against witches were needed. In 1563 a new law was passed which brought back the death penalty for witches who used magic to kill someone. Witches who harmed people were put in prison. Between 1580 and 1590 England was losing a lot of money, there were increasing numbers of poor people and people were scared of disease and invasion. These fears and problems led many people to believe in witchcraft it was especially easy to blame something like the devil or witches for people s problems. During James I s reign James was seen as one of the most intelligent and clever Kings to rule England. Some of the King s ministers were strict Protestants and they persuaded him to introduce a harsher law against witches. James himself even wrote a book about witchcraft. From 1604 anyone who was shown to have contacted evil spirits could be hanged for witchcraft, whether or not they had done any harm. Between the 1570s and 1610s new jobs were set up and people were paid for hunting witches. The highest paid of these was called the Witchfinder General. Charles I During Charles reign ( ) he relaxed laws on witchcraft and became more concerned with issues such as taxes and wars with Scotland and France, and even with the English. The English Civil Wars ( ) and the 1700s. Extreme Protestants took control of large parts of England during and after the English Civil Wars. These Protestants or Puritans took the Bible very seriously and strongly believed in witchcraft. The new English leader Oliver Cromwell made laws to punish people found guilty of witchcraft, because his extreme Puritan views meant he strongly believed in the powers of witches. In the 1700s Kings and Queens had favourite scientists and thinkers, most of whom believed in reason and science and not witchcraft. Astronomy and travel and trade and music seemed to be more important for leaders rather than witches and evil. This was all part of early modern thinking and as a result fewer laws were made about superstitions such as witchcraft.

8 TASK 6 - Read the article on witch bottles. People had a real fear of witches. If you had your own house you would try and keep witches away so that no harm would come to you or your family. Witch Bottles What do you do if you find yourself bewitched? If you find you are constantly out of sorts, and you just know someone has put the evil eye on you? The answer is obvious: you must set about killing the witch who has bewitched you. But how do you set about killing a witch? Well, the first thing you do is to get a witch bottle. Any old bottle will do - often they are made of pottery - the type known as bellarmines - but sometimes, as in this case, it is a wine bottle made of glass. In fact this was rather an old bottle, for it was made about 1685, but it was not buried until some time after 1720, so it was already some 40 years old when it was finally buried. It had been well-used too - note the chips on the rim: it had been re-used year after year for containing wine or other liquids. But finally, when it was too old for further use, it was turned into a witch bottle, and buried. Inside the bottle you put a number of objects that will do harm to the witch. Inside this one there were a number of bent pins - nine in all, all each bent into an L-shape. Note how the head of the pin is made by winding wire twice round the shank and then cutting the ends. Then add some human hair - this example, highly magnified, was probably an eyelash. Also some wool fibres and leaves of some prickly grass, and then add the most critical ingredient: urine. Then bury the witch bottle, preferably in a warm place under the hearth, and when the witch tries to pass water, she will suffer dreadful torments and may even die. This works well even if you do not know who the witch is: you simply watch all your friends and neighbours, and if one of them suddenly falls ill, and possibly even dies, then that person must be the witch who is harming you. One witch bottle was dug up at Reigate, just south of London, where it was found buried in a ruined house. The bottle was however complete, the stopper was still in position, so it provided an unusual opportunity to examine the contents. Alan Massey, who has been studying witch bottles, was able to study the contents, and even to determine - with some difficulty - that the liquid was in fact urine. Whether the witch bottle was "successful" we cannot know: however, witch bottles were often meant to explode when the witch finally expired, and as this witch bottle survived, perhaps it was a failure, and the witch survived too.

9 Design and draw your witch bottle in the space below think carefully about ingredients to include (BRONZE) What do witch bottles tell or show us about people s beliefs in those days? (SILVER)

10 This article from the British Archaeology Magazine in 2009 explains some more about witch bottles if you are interested in stuff like this you might want to look up the Young Archaeologists Society on the Internet and get involved with our local Bath and Somerset group.

11 TASK 7 - Examples of real people accused of witchcraft. Look at the cover of this pamphlet from Be careful because some letter I characters are actually Js, and some fs are actually the letter s. Remember our language has changed over the centuries think how different Shakespeare s writing style is to ours. Study the picture and the information carefully and answer the questions about the witches. 1. Describe what you can see in this picture. What do you think is happening? Try to include any detail from the text e.g. the date. 2. She was found guilty because she was a little old lady who had lots of pets! These pets or familiars were said to be her way of contacting the devil! Do you think she deserved to be killed? Why/why not?

12 1. Describe what you can see in this picture? What do you think is happening? Try to include any detail from the text e.g. the date. 2. She was found guilty because they did not understand why or how the boy was ill. Perhaps he even went to her for some cheap medicine as there were no proper doctors in the 16 th century. Do you think she deserved to be killed? Was she just an excuse for people s fears and lack of understanding about illness?

13 Extension Task 1 (SILVER) If your homework has not taken the 5 hours it is supposed to, or if you have left some tasks out you SHOULD be doing, try these interesting extension tasks. Enjoy! Oh and gain extra House Points by doing these! Read the article below. King James I believed that witches existed to bring people to the devil. He even accused a group of witches and warlocks of trying to sink his ship as he journeyed with his new queen from Denmark to Scotland by casting spells that brought up terrible storms (which did manage to sink his wedding/treasure ship). However, under Charles I ( ) laws against witches were relaxed, as he was busy dealing with arguments over money and wars. In the 1640s England became more strongly Protestant and Protestants believed in witches at that time. As Oliver Cromwell started to take over England and as English people became poorer and angry during their Civil War, accusing people of being witches became common again. In the 1640s a man called Matthew Hopkins was given the job of finding witches. He was paid by people to find them so it was in his interests to make sure he told people what to look for to accuse people. Simple things like having too many pets or living alone or having too many moles were seen as evidence of being a witch. Other signs and symbols were various marks found upon the body - any of what we now refer to as beauty marks, or even boils, and other slight skin imperfections (including dry skin splotches) made the witchfinders highly suspicious - these were viewed upon as signs of unholy alliance and contracts with the Devil. To prove his case, Hopkins would insert a needle into the spot causing immense pain. In England, witches were often kept awake for days on end until they confessed. Sleep deprivation is still a technique used by secret police and military forces, as well as in religious cults, in order to break down a person's will. Another well know method to discover a witch was to bind the suspect and lower (or drop) them into water. If they drowned, they were proven to be innocent. If, by some miracle they did not drown, they were considered guilty - and then drowned deliberately. Other forms of actual execution were hanging, burning, and drowning. One of the first documented cases by Hopkins was against a woman named Elizabeth Clarke. She was a one-legged widow, or so the story says (many who came under suspicion of witchcraft were widows, or women who had no strong men to protect them). The Witchfinder General extracted a confession from her which stated she was too familiar with her familiars generally considered to be demons in the guise of earthly animals (cats, goats, etc). The women were often searched for a third teat as proof of satanic connections (woe be it to anyone who had a not terribly uncommon superfluous third nipple) - it was this which nurtured the demon.

14 Now your job is to either design a poster to advertise for the job of being a witchfinder OR a poster by a witchfinder to show what people should look for to find a witch. You can use the box on the next page. So old women and people who lived on their own were easy targets to accuse of witchcraft. It was easier for people to believe in it as people would probably rather see such a person be accused than themselves so they went along with it! In all it is suspected that Hopkins was directly or indirectly associated with perhaps as many as 200 executions. Finally, some people and institutions began to tire of Hopkins. Parliament itself published its own pamphlet questioning the practices of witchfinders in general. Even some brave clergymen went on record denouncing the rather ridiculous and arbitrary methods used to find these followers of Satan. They even hinted that Hopkins himself might be a witch! Stories vary as to whether or not Hopkins benefited financially from his evil activities - some say he did, others that he was on a holy quest, and monies obtained were slight. Extension Task 2 (GOLD) Hopkins had many people killed just because he was able to spread rumours which some people were all too happy to believe and keep spreading. People also gave him too much power so he was judge, jury and even really executioner. Explain why you think giving too much power to one person is a dangerous thing. Why do you think we no longer have the death penalty in our country?

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16 Extension Task 3 you ll like this one. Try and go onto youtube and look up Rory McGrath s TV programme called Bloody Britain. There should be an episode about Matthew Hopkins if you cannot find it we could watch it in class. Self Evaluation of my Homework I am a R learner. I know this because: I believe that my effort and attitude to learning for this booklet is a: I know this because: