# Tudor History Buffs: Need Help With Obscure Details of Life **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 21, 2005, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tudor-history-buffs-need-help-with-obscure-details-of-life/327333 "2005-10-21T21:08:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2005, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tudor-history-buffs-need-help-with-obscure-details-of-life/327333/21 "2005-10-24T17:47:15Z")
> [@APB](#): > > With the caveats that those convicted of heresy under canon law could be handed over to the secular authorities to be burnt at the stake and that suspected witches could sometimes be prosecuted in the secular courts for other offences. But only if there was a corresponding secular law for them to be charged with. The Inquisition in Spain burned heretics, not just because heresy was against canon law, but it was also against Spanish law. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2005, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tudor-history-buffs-need-help-with-obscure-details-of-life/327333/22 "2005-10-24T17:47:33Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#): > > Well, witchcraft was first made a crime under English law in 1542. That law was repealed in 1547. Another law against witchcraft was passed in 1563. That law was replaced by a harsher one in 1603 (increasing the number of offenses that could be punished by death), and that law was repealed in 1736. Witchcraft was against canon law by the Catholic Church (which would become moot in England with Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy), but capital punishment wasn’t part of canon law. Didn’t the ecclesiastical tibunals turned people over to _civil_ authorities for capital punishment? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2005, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tudor-history-buffs-need-help-with-obscure-details-of-life/327333/23 "2005-10-24T19:38:30Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > Didn’t the ecclesiastical tibunals turned people over to _civil_ authorities for capital punishment? Right…that’s what I meant. The ecclesiastical court would find the person guilty and impose a penance, and then turn him or her over to a civil court, which would then find the person guilty and impose punishment, including capital punishment. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2005, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tudor-history-buffs-need-help-with-obscure-details-of-life/327333/24 "2005-10-24T19:40:35Z")
Sorry, because I didn’t stress this in my last post…if there was no corresponding civil crime to the religious crime, the state obviously wouldn’t punish the offenders. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2005, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tudor-history-buffs-need-help-with-obscure-details-of-life/327333/25 "2005-10-26T09:11:16Z")
Actually English law on this point, specifically _De heretico comburendo_, didn’t make that distinction. There the complication was a different one, in that opinion varied widely as to whether _De heretico comburendo_ could be invoked in witchcraft cases and in fact there is no recorded case in which this is known to have happened, which is no doubt part of the reason why opinion on the matter varied so much. There is also the point that when the English church courts had tried witches, they had tended not to accuse them specifically of heresy. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2005, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tudor-history-buffs-need-help-with-obscure-details-of-life/327333/26 "2005-10-26T12:55:06Z")
Well, I’ll just ask flat-out: One of my characters is a midwife. I had planned that one of her patients and the infant would die, and because of the tactics she used to try to save them, the midwife would be accused of witchcraft, of causing the deaths through\* maleficarum\*. I don’t necessarily need her to hang-- she could die in prison. Given what you’ve told me, I don’t know now if such an accusation would be possible. I know that midwives were usually highly respected members of the community, and not as prone to accusations as most people would suspect, but my character has other issues which would make the community suspicious. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2005, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tudor-history-buffs-need-help-with-obscure-details-of-life/327333/27 "2005-10-26T14:21:50Z")
Is it important that she be convicted of witchcraft? Could you have her accused of poisoning the mother and baby? ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2005, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tudor-history-buffs-need-help-with-obscure-details-of-life/327333/28 "2005-10-26T18:27:21Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Wouldn’t they have burned her rather than hanging? Nah, in England, they mostly hanged witches around this time. They burned heretics, and women convicted of killing their husbands-- considered “petty treason.” **Captain Amazing,** the witchcraft angle is very important to my story, so important that if I can’t work it in correctly, I’ll have to scrap the whole thing. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2005, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tudor-history-buffs-need-help-with-obscure-details-of-life/327333/29 "2005-10-27T11:34:50Z")
It depends entirely on what sort of date you’re talking about. After 1563 it’s all very simple. The midwife gets accused of killing the child by witchcraft, she is held in custody until being tried at the assizes (a secular court) and, on being found guilty, is executed as a felon by being hanged. In other words, the classic image from popular culture of an English witch trial. Between 1542 and 1547 the same scenario could apply, although it is unclear how far the 1542 Witchcraft Act was ever implemented. I’ve got a feeling that there is no evidence that anyone was ever actually executed under it. Certainly there are only a handful of known prosecutions. That leaves the period before 1542 and between 1547 and 1563. This is where it gets complicated. Witchcraft cases were a matter for the church courts. Moreover, as I’ve said already, it was a matter of dispute whether a conviction for witchcraft in a church court in England could carry the death penalty (by burning at the stake) and no actual instance of this happening there is known. To this there are the two caveats. If the church courts found a person guilty of heresy, there was no doubt (in England) that they could be burnt at the stake. But the church courts in England, unlike some on the Continent, usually avoided linking witchcraft with heresy. That reluctance to link the two was, of course, one of the most famous peculiarities of English ideas about witchcraft (although there were subtle shifts in this later in the period as Continental ideas began to influence English one). Being thought to have killed a baby by witchcraft would not have been enough to get the midwife accused of heresy. So if she was tried before 1542 (or between 1547 and 1563), she wouldn’t have been executed. The other caveat is that the secular courts could always prosecute a suspected witch for other offences. Predicting the death of the king was a particular favourite. But such cases almost always had a political dimension and were rare exceptions. Again, this presumably wouldn’t be applicable to your midwife. The startling statistic is that the total number of known cases from England from the entire period before the mid-sixteenteenth century in which persons accused of witchcraft ended up being executed\* is in single figures. Executing witches was a habit the English had yet to acquire (although it was one they acquired quickly enough after 1563). \*noting that ‘persons accused of witchcraft [who] ended up being executed’ is not the same as ‘person executed for witchcraft’ Having her die in prison before or after a trial in a church court before 1542 (etc. etc.) may not solve the problem either. The church courts didn’t impose custodial sentences and (although this is off the top of my head) I have an awful feeling that they wouldn’t have held her in custody before the trial. Why not have one of the child’s relatives take revenge by murdering her? A bit of DIY justice? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tudor-history-buffs-need-help-with-obscure-details-of-life/327333.md?page=1)