Check that this is your course

This guide is for Pearson Edexcel A Level History, Paper 3 option 33: The witch craze in Britain, Europe and North America, c1580-c1750.

It is the right guide if your breadth study covers changing British attitudes to witchcraft and the wider development of science and reason, while your five depth studies are:

• North Berwick, 1590-91, and its aftermath to 1597;
• Lancashire, 1604-13;
• Bamberg, 1623-32;
• Matthew Hopkins and East Anglia, 1645-47; and
• Cotton Mather and Salem, 1692-93.

Paper 3 lasts 2 hours 15 minutes, carries 60 marks and is worth 30% of your A level.

• Section A: one compulsory 20-mark question evaluating a contemporary source through two linked enquiries from the depth content.
• Section B: one 20-mark depth essay chosen from two.
• Section C: one 20-mark breadth essay chosen from two. Your answer must cover at least 100 years.

Pause permission: learn the five case-study sequences first. Then build the long-run breadth argument about why prosecutions declined. You do not need to memorise every name in one sitting.

The whole course in one argument

Belief in harmful witchcraft made accusations understandable to early modern people, but belief alone did not create a major hunt. Escalation required accusers, authorities willing to act, legal methods capable of widening a case and a context in which misfortune or political danger could be interpreted through witchcraft.

Law and government explain much of the variation. Torture, coercive questioning and demands to name accomplices could turn one prosecution into a chain. Fragmented jurisdictions and weak external review sometimes allowed hunts to grow. Stronger judicial control and stricter evidentiary standards could stop them, even when belief remained.

Most defendants were women, but there was no single victim profile. Gendered assumptions, poverty, age, reputation, healing work, household exchange and neighbourhood conflict all shaped vulnerability. Expanding hunts could also reach men and socially prominent people.

Between c1580 and c1750, fraud exposure, sceptical writing, legal restraint and changing approaches to knowledge made large prosecutions harder to sustain. Science did not simply defeat superstition. The decline was institutional, evidentiary and intellectual, and it occurred unevenly.

Study the subject precisely

This course concerns accusation, coercion, imprisonment and execution. Avoid sensational language and keep these stages separate:

1. Suspicion: a person acquires a reputation or is blamed for harm. 2. Accusation: someone alleges witchcraft. 3. Investigation: an official gathers testimony or questions suspects. 4. Prosecution: the case enters a legal process. 5. Conviction or acquittal: a court reaches an outcome. 6. Punishment or release: the consequence follows.

A rise in accusations is not automatically a rise in convictions or executions.

Anchor dates

• 1584: Reginald Scot publishes The Discoverie of Witchcraft.
• 1590-91: North Berwick prosecutions.
• 1597: James VI publishes Daemonologie; Boy of Burton case.
• 1599: Samuel Harsnett challenges fraudulent exorcism.
• 1604: new English Witchcraft Act.
• 1612: Pendle trials at Lancaster.
• 1623-32: severe Bamberg persecution.
• 1634: Pendle Swindle exposes fabricated allegations.
• 1645-47: Hopkins and Stearne operate in East Anglia.
• 1656: Thomas Ady's A Candle in the Dark.
• 1660: Royal Society founded.
• 1662: Demon Drummer of Tedworth controversy.
• 1677: John Webster publishes The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft.
• 1689-1710: Sir John Holt's tenure as Chief Justice.
• 1690: Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
• 1691: Balthasar Bekker's The World Bewitched begins publication.
• 1692-93: Salem trials and their ending.
• 1712: Jane Wenham trial.
• 1736: earlier British witchcraft statutes repealed.

Essential vocabulary

Maleficium: harmful magic alleged to cause injury, illness, loss or death.

Demonology: learned writing about demons, witchcraft, pacts and alleged conspiracy.

Demonic pact: alleged agreement between a witch and the Devil.

Chain accusation: expansion when suspects are pressed to name others.

Torture: deliberate pain or extreme coercion used to obtain information or confession; its legal status varied.

Spectral evidence: testimony that an accused person's spirit or shape caused harm.

Empiricism: an approach emphasising observation and experience in forming knowledge.

Materialism: the view, associated here with Hobbes, that reality should be explained through matter and physical causes.

Judicial restraint: a court's refusal to accept weak evidence or permit unsafe prosecution.

Provenance: a source's origin, authorship, purpose and circumstances of creation.

Breadth theme 1: changing attitudes in Britain

Attitudes did not move neatly from belief to disbelief. Doubt could mean exposing fraud, rejecting a particular accusation, questioning demonological theory or insisting that courts needed stronger evidence.

Reginald Scot argued in 1584 that deception and mistaken explanation lay behind many claims. Samuel Harsnett attacked fraudulent exorcism. Thomas Ady and John Webster challenged elements of witch belief and prosecution from distinct religious and intellectual positions. Balthasar Bekker's work questioned the extent of demonic intervention. Do not treat these writers as one modern secular movement.

Cases tested credibility. The Boy of Burton and the 1634 Pendle Swindle revealed how allegations could be manufactured. The Demon Drummer of Tedworth created controversy rather than a simple victory for either belief or scepticism. Jane Wenham's 1712 conviction and pardon show belief surviving alongside increasing judicial reluctance.

Sir John Holt is important because his handling of cases between 1689 and 1710 illustrates evidentiary restraint. Judges could direct juries towards acquittal and expose unreliable claims without declaring witchcraft impossible. Courts changed before popular belief disappeared.

Knowledge check

1. Give three different meanings of scepticism in this period. 2. Why does a fraudulent case not prove that nobody believed in witchcraft? 3. How could Holt reduce convictions without ending belief? 4. Why should Scot, Harsnett, Ady, Webster and Bekker not be treated as identical thinkers?

Breadth theme 2: science and reason

Kepler, Galileo and Newton contributed to mathematical and observational accounts of nature. Bacon promoted systematic observation and experiment. Gresham College and, from 1660, the Royal Society created settings for organised investigation. Hobbes emphasised deductive reasoning and material explanation. Locke examined how human understanding rests on experience and the limits of knowledge.

These changes could make testimony, causation and invisible agency more open to challenge. Yet the relationship with witchcraft was indirect. Scientific practitioners did not all reject supernatural belief, and new ideas did not reach every group at the same speed. Courts, clergy and communities also had their own reasons for caution.

For a breadth judgement, connect intellectual change to legal restraint, criticism of coerced evidence, fraud exposure and memories of excessive prosecution. Science contributed to a changing climate of plausibility; it was not a switch that turned belief off.

Can you simplify that for me, please?

The minimum idea: prosecutions declined because claims became harder to prove in court, not because everyone suddenly stopped believing.

• Evidence: information used to support a claim.
• Causation: an explanation of why something happened.
• Restraint: a decision not to proceed without adequate proof.
• Plausibility: how credible an explanation seems.

Concrete example: a judge might believe witchcraft existed but still reject a child's contradictory testimony as unsafe evidence.

Sequence: new ways of testing claims + exposed frauds + stricter judges + criticism of coercion -> fewer convictions, while belief may continue.

Recognition check: Did scientific change instantly end witch belief? No.

Explanation check: Why could trials decline before belief? Because institutions could raise the standard of proof while leaving the underlying belief unresolved.

Return to the breadth argument: distinguish changing plausibility from changing legal practice, then explain how they interacted.

Depth study 1: North Berwick, 1590-97

James VI's voyage to Denmark exposed him to Danish witch prosecutions. After storms disrupted the royal journey, Scottish allegations of weather magic acquired political significance. Gilly Duncan's accusation helped open a chain involving Agnes Sampson and John Fian.

Torture and royal questioning shaped confessions and the naming of others. Claims that Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, was connected to a conspiracy linked witchcraft with dynastic insecurity. The alleged sabbath and storm-raising must be treated as accusations constructed through interrogation, not established events.

James mattered through his personal intervention, his concern for royal authority and the demonological position expressed in Daemonologie (1597). But Denmark did not simply export a hunt, and James did not act alone. Local accusers, officials, legal procedure and weak central restraint made escalation possible.

Essay tension: was North Berwick primarily a royal-political prosecution, or did James accelerate a process rooted in local belief and judicial practice?

Depth study 2: Lancashire, 1604-13

The 1604 Witchcraft Act strengthened the legal setting. Pendle's poverty, marginal households, religious tension, reputation and neighbour conflict created local vulnerability, but none was sufficient by itself.

Alizon Device's encounter with pedlar John Law led magistrate Roger Nowell to investigate. Suspicion focused on the rival Demdike and Chattox families. The Malkin Tower meeting widened the case, and the accused were tried at Lancaster in 1612.

At the assize, Sir Edward Bromley, William Altham, confessions, accusations and child testimony shaped outcomes. Thomas Potts's The Wonderfull Discoverie supplies detailed evidence but was a crafted, officially supported account. Test its selection and purpose rather than treating it as a transcript.

The 1634 Pendle Swindle belongs mainly to the breadth story: fabricated child allegations were exposed, demonstrating growing concern about evidentiary reliability.

Essay tension: weigh local social relationships against the law, investigation and courtroom decisions that turned suspicion into execution.

Depth study 3: Bamberg, 1623-32

Bamberg was a prince-bishopric within the fragmented Holy Roman Empire. Recatholicisation, the Thirty Years' War and economic crisis sharpened insecurity, but institutional conditions explain why persecution became so severe.

Prince-Bishop Johann Georg Fuchs von Dornheim and suffragan bishop Friedrich Forner encouraged prosecution. Torture, confiscation and pressure to name accomplices expanded accusations across social groups. The special prison known as the Drudenhaus embodied this organised machinery.

The hunt ended through intervention and disruption, not vanished belief. Appeals reached the Imperial Chamber Court; Emperor Ferdinand II applied pressure; Swedish military advance changed the political setting. Wider accusations and procedural excess also undermined sustainability.

Essay tension: crisis helps explain timing, while political authority and legal procedure better explain scale.

Depth study 4: Hopkins and East Anglia, 1645-47

The hunt developed during civil-war disruption. Assize oversight weakened, local government was strained and Puritan moral pressure mattered. Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne worked through invitations and payments from communities and magistrates; Hopkins was never an official national "Witchfinder General".

Watching, sleep deprivation, walking and searches for alleged marks were coercive, even though judicial torture was not normally lawful in English common-law trials. Hopkins's mobility and claimed expertise helped accusations spread.

The hunt ended as costs and criticism rose, John Gaule challenged the methods and stronger authority returned. Hopkins accelerated an exceptional hunt, but a Hopkins-only explanation erases local accusers, magistrates, law and wartime disruption.

Essay tension: distinguish the importance of an organiser from the conditions that allowed him to operate.

Depth study 5: Cotton Mather and Salem, 1692-93

Salem followed the weakening of Massachusetts authority after 1688, political uncertainty, economic pressure, frontier warfare and social tension. Samuel Parris's household provided the initial setting. Tituba was accused within this colonial community; do not repeat the myth that she imported an exotic witch religion.

Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences helped shape the intellectual setting, but did not simply cause the trials. Afflicted children, accusers, magistrates and the Court of Oyer and Terminer expanded the cases. Spectral evidence mattered, although it was not the only evidence used.

Women formed the majority of accused people, but men were also prosecuted and executed. As accusations widened, confidence fell. Increase Mather criticised reliance on spectral evidence, Governor Phips ended the special court, later proceedings used stricter standards and a general pardon followed.

Essay tension: Cotton Mather's influence must be tested against political instability, Parris, frontier violence, local conflict and institutional choices.

Section A: evaluating the contemporary source

Section A is not an interpretations question. You evaluate one contemporary source for two linked enquiries.

A reliable method

1. Identify what the source says about each enquiry. 2. Select precise details from its content. 3. Test those details with secure contextual knowledge. 4. Analyse provenance: who produced it, when, for whom and why. 5. Explain how content, context and provenance affect its value. 6. Reach a balanced judgement for both enquiries.

For Potts's account of Lancashire, detailed courtroom information may be valuable because he wrote close to proceedings and with access to official material. The same authorised purpose can shape what he highlights, suppresses or presents as orderly justice. Provenance is not a reason to dismiss the source; it helps you judge the kind of evidence it provides.

Avoid saying merely that a source is biased. Explain the precise consequence for a stated enquiry.

Section B: the depth essay

Build a causal argument rather than narrating the case.

1. Define the question's key term. 2. Establish two or three criteria for importance. 3. Compare the stated factor with alternatives. 4. Use chronology to show triggers, escalation and ending. 5. Reach an overall judgement answering the exact wording.

For a question about individuals, distinguish initiator, accelerator, enabler and restrainer. Hopkins, James VI or Cotton Mather may be important without being sufficient causes.

Section C: the breadth essay

Your answer must cover at least 100 years. Organise by factors or phases, not isolated case-study stories.

For a question on declining belief or prosecution, compare:

• exposure of fraud;
• sceptical publications;
• judicial restraint and evidentiary standards;
• scientific and philosophical change;
• stronger central control;
• criticism after procedural excess.

Use early, middle and later evidence in every main section. A strong judgement distinguishes what reduced belief, what reduced willingness to prosecute, and what reduced convictions.

Retrieval practice

Without looking back, produce:

1. the six stages from suspicion to outcome; 2. fifteen anchor dates; 3. definitions of chain accusation, spectral evidence, empiricism and judicial restraint; 4. a North Berwick trigger-escalation-aftermath sequence; 5. a Lancashire people-law-evidence table; 6. a Bamberg crisis-authority-procedure-ending diagram; 7. a Hopkins individual-versus-context comparison; 8. a Salem local-versus-colonial explanation; 9. three distinct forms of scepticism; 10. a 100-year decline plan linking law and ideas; 11. one Section A provenance paragraph; 12. one Section B causal conclusion and one Section C change-over-time conclusion.

Take this further

Create a five-column matrix for North Berwick, Lancashire, Bamberg, East Anglia and Salem. Add rows for:

• trigger;
• political and social context;
• leading individuals;
• legal procedure;
• mechanisms of escalation;
• reasons the prosecution ended.

Then make two judgements: which factor best explains variation in scale, and which factor best explains why each hunt ended? Use one counter-example against each judgement.

Your next action

Choose one depth study. On one page, write:

• a five-event sequence;
• three interacting causes;
• two pieces of evidence about legal procedure;
• one reason the hunt ended; and
• a judgement beginning, "The most important condition was… because…"

Then add two breadth links: one to changing judicial restraint and one to changing ideas about reliable knowledge. Any missing box is your next retrieval target.

Official course source used

• Pearson Edexcel A Level History specification, Issue 4 (June 2026), option 33 and Paper 3 assessment requirements.