AHC: Make Witch Trials in America Worse

The Witch Trials in the New World were not nearly as extensive or long lasting as those in Europe, however, they may be equally as infamous (especially the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93). How can we make them more extensive and last longer? What would be the consequences? Where would potential hotspots be in the future for Witch Trials?
 
The Witch Trials in the New World were not nearly as extensive or long lasting as those in Europe, however, they may be equally as infamous (especially the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93). How can we make them more extensive and last longer? What would be the consequences? Where would potential hotspots be in the future for Witch Trials?
Make witchcraft, as the witch-hunters saw it, a real thing and thus a real threat to society...
 
Have the Scottish law definition of witchcraft as crimen laesae maiestatis Dei supersede the Common Law definition of witchcraft as a crime against person or property earlier. English law was "soft on sorcery" because, like other "soft" traditrions, it continued to use a definition of witchcraft that regarded is as a criminal act against a person, like burglary or assault. Other legal systems (most notoriously the imperial criminal code, but also canon law, which was moderately safe to be tried under) viewed it as a crime of treason against God, and thus punishable by the highest penalty per se as well as socially corrosive in the highest degree.

Have people in the English-speaking world not only take witchcraft seriously, but have them think it is something contagious and subversive, like Socialism or abolitionism. That should ensure more vigour in the prosecution.
 
Have the Scottish law definition of witchcraft as crimen laesae maiestatis Dei supersede the Common Law definition of witchcraft as a crime against person or property earlier. English law was "soft on sorcery" because, like other "soft" traditrions, it continued to use a definition of witchcraft that regarded is as a criminal act against a person, like burglary or assault. Other legal systems (most notoriously the imperial criminal code, but also canon law, which was moderately safe to be tried under) viewed it as a crime of treason against God, and thus punishable by the highest penalty per se as well as socially corrosive in the highest degree.

Have people in the English-speaking world not only take witchcraft seriously, but have them think it is something contagious and subversive, like Socialism or abolitionism. That should ensure more vigour in the prosecution.

So how does Scottish Law come to play in New England?

Also, that sounds sinisterly dystopic. :eek:
 
Have a plague wipe out most of the town in 1692 with only those accused seemingly unaffected (they are likely isolated in the jail house after all). Accused witches were also often competent herbalists so maybe one of them blunders across a medicinal plant which she shares with the rest as so saves them from the plague. This causes a panic especially as the plague reaches into Boston and beyond, many of the religious findamentalists suspicious of the witch trials might take a second look as they now suspect the Devil might have agents in Massachusetts Colony.
 
Earlier English style settlement might do it. The Witch Craze was already dieing down in Europe by the time Salem happened. Have a European population roughly as big or bigger than 1690s New England in America in the 16th or early 17th century when the European witch craze was at its height and you'd probably see far more and bigger witch trials.
 
So how does Scottish Law come to play in New England?

Influence. I guess. The English witch hunters eventually adopted the ideas laid out by James Stuart in his Demonologia (which is not an original book, just something he picked up from contemporary discourse on the continent). It sounded convincing.

The 1563 Scottish Witchcraft Act made all commerce with the devil and his servants capital offenses, while the 1562 English one based the sentence (ranging from imprisonment to hanging) on the harm caused. This changed in 1604 when communing with evil spirits and having familiars (something all witches were thought to do) was made a capital offense regardless of effect. still, you could get away with a one-year prison term for being an ineffective witch.

It is quite possible to imagine more English legislators adopting the uncompromising position of James I and deciding that witchcraft in all cases constituted treason against God. That was the legal concept that opened the floodgates of witchcraft trials in Germany. The question was no longer whether you could prove harm caused or magic used, the mere fact that a pact with the devil had been made was enough to warrant death. Common Law doesn't have an exact equivalent to a maiestas crime, but witchcraft that constituted petty treason was automatically capital, so the idea could have fit in.
 

mowque

Banned
Accused witches were also often competent herbalists so maybe one of them blunders across a medicinal plant which she shares with the rest as so saves them from the plague.

No plant saves you from bubonic plague.
 
Have a plague wipe out most of the town in 1692 with only those accused seemingly unaffected (they are likely isolated in the jail house after all).
Although, of course, if no jailers come near them then they probably die of dehyration...
 
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