THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION IN COLONIAL CONNECTICUT; 1647-1697; BY JOHN M. TAYLOR; 1908

State Laws against Witchcraft

The forefathers believed in witchcraft—entering into compacts with the Devil—and in all its diabolical subtleties. They had cogent reasons for their belief in example and experience. They set it down in their codes as a capital offense. They found, as has been shown abundant authority in the Bible and in the English precedents. They anchored their criminal codes as they did their theology in the wide and deep haven of the Old Testament decrees and prophecies and maledictions, and doubted not that 'the Scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in all duties which they are to perform to God and men.'

Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven, early in their history enacted these capital laws: In Massachusetts (1641):

'Witchcraft which is fellowship by covenant with a familiar spirit to be punished with death.'

'Consulters with witches not to be tolerated, but either to be cut off by death or banishment or other suitable punishment.' (Abstract New England Laws, 1655.)

In Connecticut (1642):

'If any man or woman be a witch—that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit—they shall be put to death.' Exodus xxii, 18; Leviticus xx, 27; Deuteronomy xviii, 10, 11. (Colonial Records of Connecticut, Vol. I, p. 77).

In New Haven (1655):

'If any person be a witch, he or she shall be put to death according to' Exodus xxii, 18; Leviticus xx, 27; Deuteronomy xviii, 10, 11. ( New Haven Colonial Records, Vol. II, p. 576, Cod. 1655).

These laws were authoritative until the epidemic had ceased.

Witches were tried, condemned, and executed with no question as to due legal power, in the minds of juries, counsel, and courts, until the hour of reaction came, hastened by doubts and criticisms of the sources and character of evidence, and the magistrates and clergy halted in their prosecutions and denunciations of an alleged crime born of delusion, and nurtured by a theology run rampant.

'They had not been taught to question the wisdom or the humanity of English criminal law.' (Blue Laws—True and False, p. 15, TRUMBULL.)

Here and there in New England, following the great immigration from Old England, from 1630-40, during the Commonwealth, and to the Restoration, several cases of witchcraft occurred, but the mania did not set its seal on the minds of men, and inspire them to run amuck in their frenzy, until the days of the swift onset in Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1692, when the zenith of Satan's reign was reached in the Puritan colonies.