Eye 1441
One of the earliest tales is of Margery Jourdemaine, The Witch of Eye, who was tried in 1441 with Thomas Southwell and Roger Bolingbroke, accused of using sorcery to know the date of the death of Henry VI. (He was just 20 at the time and lived for another 30 years). Margery was burned for treason, while her more noble accomplices were hanged, drawn and quartered. She couldn’t have been tried for witchcraft because there was no law prohibiting it.
1563 Witchcraft Act
The 1563 Witchcraft Act only condemned to death those who committed murder. While the rest of Europe burned witches, the 1563 Act only prescribed death by hanging for those “who shall use practise or exercise any witchcrafte, enchantment, charme or sorcerie whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroyed”. Lesser witchcraft offences were punishable by up to a year’s imprisonment and a spell in the pillory.
1599 Oliffe Barthram of Stradbroke
In one early Suffolk trial, Oliffe Barthram, of Stradbroke, was accused at Bury Assizes by witnesses, including the parish constable and the vicar, who testified that she had sent a spirit, in the form of a cat called Gyles, down the chimney of one Joan Jordan, to kill her.
It was also claimed that she had killed an unborn child by “nipping out his brains”. She was found guilty and hanged at Bury on July 12, 1599.