Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia (Research Paper Sample)

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Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia
Introduction
Colonial Virginians and their neighbors to the north found a common spiritual belief. While the witches craze that swept Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 was noteworthy, it has managed to obscure the historical accounts of other early American oppression. Joan Wright, the first female, convicted of sorcery in British North America, was the catalyst for Virginia's witch hysteria, which began in 1626. In 1626, Virginia was just the first colony to receive an official witchcraft allegation, followed by the first prosecution in 1641 as discussed in this treatise.
Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia
For ancient Virginians, sorcery was a legitimate concern. The English immigrants in the settlement carried a firm view of the demon's power and existence in the New World. The Jamestown colonists' early conceptions of the Virginia Indians, whom they considered evil monsters, reflected this notion. Following 1622, several colonists started accusing each other of witchcraft (Norton 88). Even though witchcraft cases in Virginia were less prevalent and the sentencing was less harsh than those in the Massachusetts Bay Colony's more renowned Salem witch trials, proof shows that roughly two dozen similar tests occurred in Virginia between 1626 and 1730. They included everything from civil slander lawsuits to criminal offenses. One of the most notable of them was the trial of Sherwood, in which the justices used a waters test to confirm her guilt. According to records, the last land colony witchcraft trial occurred in Virginia in 1730; five years later, Legislature abolished the Witchcraft Act of 1604, which allowed British American settlers to punish guilty witches (Hudson Jr 154). Since then, sorcery has been chiefly disregarded as a part of life in colonial Virginia.
The case of Sherwood is the most well-known witch trial in colonial Virginia. In 1698, Sherwood was charged by her neighbors with bewitching their pigs to destruction and bewitching their Cotton. Later that year, the same Grace came to her one night and rid [ridden] her and fled out of the small opening or gap of the gate like a black Catt." Sherwood and her spouse, James, sued the claimants for malice, but they lost both cases. The suspicions and allegations persisted until Sherwood was brought before the Jury in 1706 (Hudson Jr 69). After a congressional inquiry, the conservative judges