What Is The Role Of Witch Hunts In History

WITCH HUNTS THROUGHOUT HISTORY
Witch Hunts were one of the harshest hunts in history. Although these hunts were very harsh, they were very common. They were a search for people who accused of being a witch. In most cases, it was fairly easy to get out of accusations, as long as you could blame someone else. “Throughout history there were several cases of these so-called, witch hunts.”
THE HARTFORD WITCH TRIALS
One of the very first witch hunts that happened in America, took place in Hartford, Connecticut. The witch hysteria began when Elizabeth Kelly’s parents assumed a woman named Goody Ayres bewitched Elizabeth and made her ill. This assumption arose when Elizabeth came home with Ayres and shouted, “Father! Father! Help me, help me! Goodwife
The King had been harmed by what people had thought presumed to be witchcraft. These trials were held in 1590 in Scotland. “The North Berwick witch trials were the trials in 1590 of a number of people from East Lothian, Scotland, accused of witchcraft in the St Andrew's Auld Kirk in North Berwick. They ran for two years and implicated seventy people (Wikipedia)” King James VI had went to Copenhagen to marry the King of Denmark’s sister, Princess Anne. On their way back to Scotland, they experienced harsh storms. The man who led the ships accused the terrible storms to be a result of witchcraft of a high official in Scotland. Many important people in the Scottish courts were accused. One of the very first people were Anna Koldings, who accused 5 other girls. All of the girls confessed to causing the storms, two of which were hung in September (Wikipedia). Eventually, tons of people that were suspected of witchcraft were arrested. Most of these people were tortured and eventually admitted to trying to kill the king. These attempts included, “poisoning the King and other members of his household, and attempting to sink the King's ship (Wikipedia).”Out of all the people accused, there were two particularly significant. “The two most significant accused persons were Agnes Sampson, a respected and elderly woman from Humbie, and Dr. John Fian a schoolmaster and
These trials took place in Salem, Massachussetts, around the late 17th century. “Early in 1692, a circle of young girls began to meet in the home of Samuel Parris, the Puritan pastor of Salem Village (Billings, Manning).” With Parris lived his 9-year-old daughter, Betty, and his 11-year-old niece, Abigail. They were both interested in their slave, Tituba’s, powers. They invited their friend and, “began to behave strangely, complaining of physical maladies, reporting visions, lapsing into trances, and trembling and babbling without restraint (Billings, Manning).” These symptoms were commonly associated with witchcraft, so everyone believed the girls when they blamed Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne (Billings, Manning). Mostly everyone believed the girl’s but, to be sure, each of the girls were examined for marks of the devil. “One method of identification was a search of the accused’s body for physical signs left behind by the devil. These bodily searches were performed on the woman accused, by matrons and midwives, by order of the sheriff. The first six women to be identified as witches through this method were executed (Billings, Manning).” It is very ironic that the matrons and midwives diagnosed the accusers with bewitchment marks because these women were highly educated in the health field, like medicine. These women would’ve known why the marks were there and they