page_title: Witchcraft Act 1735
section_title: History of the Witchcraft Act 1735
hierarchical_section_title: Witchcraft Act 1735 / History of the Witchcraft Act 1735
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of James Erskine, Lord Grange
context_page_description: The Witchcraft Act was a law passed by the Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1735 which made it a crime for a person to claim that any human being had magical powers or was guilty of practising witchcraft. With this, the law abolished the hunting and executions of witches in Great Britain. The maximum penalty set out by the Act was a year's imprisonment.
  It thus marks the end point of the witch trials in the Early Modern period for Great Britain and the beginning of the "modern legal history of witchcraft", repealing the earlier Witchcraft Acts which were originally based in an intolerance toward practitioners of magic but became mired in contested Christian doctrine and superstitious witch-phobia.
  The law was reverting to the view of the primitive and the medieval Church, expressed from at least the 8th century, at the Council of Paderborn, but contested by witch-phobic Dominican Inquisitors beginning in the mid 15th century, with some success in forwarding a new doctrine among the popes, as seen in the papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, but with far less success among the bishops.
context_section_description: Initially presented to the House of Commons on 27 January 1735/6 by John Conduitt, Sir John Crosse and George Heathcote, the Act received royal assent on 24 March and came into effect on 24 June. 
  In the words of Davies (1999), the new law meant that witchcraft was "no longer to be considered a criminal act, but rather an offence against the country's newly enlightened state". Up until 1772, it was illegal for the newspapers to report on parliamentary debates, meaning that there is a lack of archival material on the parliamentary debate on the implementation of the Act.
  According to Davies, it appears that the Act "generated only a modicum of debate" within Parliament, with several amendments being suggested in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. 
  The only figure to offer significant opposition to the Act was Lord James Erskine. Erskine not only fervently believed in the existence of witchcraft, but, it has been argued, also held beliefs that were deeply rooted in "Scottish political and religious considerations" and which caused him to reject the Act. His objection to the Act "marked him out as an eccentric verging on the insane" among Members of Parliament, and in turn his political opponents would use it against him; one of his staunchest critics, Robert Walpole, who was then the de facto prime minister of the country, allegedly stating that he no longer considered Erskine to be a serious political threat as a result of his embarrassing opposition to the Act.
  The Witchcraft Act of 1735 was frequently invoked in the early years of the 19th century in an attempt by the political elite to root out "ignorance, superstition, criminality and insurrection" among the general populace, and even more so under a new statute brought in to reinforce the 1735 act in 1824.
caption: A portrait of James Erskine by William Aikman, painted in 1720. Erskine was the only Member of Parliament to voice significant opposition to the Act.
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