The powerless have always wanted to be feared
When a society is transitioning from enchantment to disenchantment, when its population is paradoxically both godly and capitalist, it is not uncommon to hear accusations of witchcraft. In 1651, in Boston, Massachusetts, Hugh Parsons and his wife Mary were charged with making a covenant with the devil; 30 years later, in Bideford, Devon, Temperance Lloyd, Susanna Edwards, and Mary Trembles were similarly accused. Both cases are unusual: the Parsons case — in which a confessed witch accused her husband of the same crime — was one of the first witchcraft trials in New England; Lloyd, Edwards, and Trembles — the so-called “Bideford witches” — were the last witches to be executed in Old England.
