![An Act to repeal the Statute made in the first Year of the Reign of King James the First, intituled, An Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft, and dealing with evil and wicked Spirits, except so much thereof as repeals an Act of the fifth Year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Against Conjurations, Inchantments and Witchcrafts, and to repeal an Act passed in the Parliament of Scotland in the ninth Parliament of Queen Mary, intituled, Anentis Witchcrafts, and for punishing such Persons as pretend to exercise or use any Kind of Witchcraft, Sorcery, Inchantment or Conjuration [drophead title]. by (WITCHCRAFT ACT).](https://images.vialibri.net/production/26/8775---height_450.jpg?v=1768303467)
![Another image of An Act to repeal the Statute made in the first Year of the Reign of King James the First, intituled, An Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft, and dealing with evil and wicked Spirits, except so much thereof as repeals an Act of the fifth Year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Against Conjurations, Inchantments and Witchcrafts, and to repeal an Act passed in the Parliament of Scotland in the ninth Parliament of Queen Mary, intituled, Anentis Witchcrafts, and for punishing such Persons as pretend to exercise or use any Kind of Witchcraft, Sorcery, Inchantment or Conjuration [drophead title]. by (WITCHCRAFT ACT).](https://images.vialibri.net/production/26/8775---800.jpg?v=1768303467)
![Another image of An Act to repeal the Statute made in the first Year of the Reign of King James the First, intituled, An Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft, and dealing with evil and wicked Spirits, except so much thereof as repeals an Act of the fifth Year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Against Conjurations, Inchantments and Witchcrafts, and to repeal an Act passed in the Parliament of Scotland in the ninth Parliament of Queen Mary, intituled, Anentis Witchcrafts, and for punishing such Persons as pretend to exercise or use any Kind of Witchcraft, Sorcery, Inchantment or Conjuration [drophead title]. by (WITCHCRAFT ACT).](https://images.vialibri.net/production/26/8775b---800.jpg?v=1768303473)
![Another image of An Act to repeal the Statute made in the first Year of the Reign of King James the First, intituled, An Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft, and dealing with evil and wicked Spirits, except so much thereof as repeals an Act of the fifth Year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Against Conjurations, Inchantments and Witchcrafts, and to repeal an Act passed in the Parliament of Scotland in the ninth Parliament of Queen Mary, intituled, Anentis Witchcrafts, and for punishing such Persons as pretend to exercise or use any Kind of Witchcraft, Sorcery, Inchantment or Conjuration [drophead title]. by (WITCHCRAFT ACT).](https://images.vialibri.net/production/26/8775c---800.jpg?v=1768303467)
(WITCHCRAFT ACT). ~ An Act to repeal the Statute made in the first Year of the Reign of King James the First, intituled, An Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft, and dealing with evil and wicked Spirits, except so much thereof as repeals an Act of the fifth Year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Against Conjurations, Inchantments and Witchcrafts, and to repeal an Act passed in the Parliament of Scotland in the ninth Parliament of Queen Mary, intituled, Anentis Witchcrafts, and for punishing such Persons as pretend to exercise or use any Kind of Witchcraft, Sorcery, Inchantment or Conjuration [drophead title]. London: John Baskett, [1735].
Folio (285 × 175 mm), [4 pages], i.e. pp. [2], 161-2, including general title-page dated 1736 for acts passed in 1734-5, contained in a complete volume of acts of Parliament for those years. Contemporary calf, upper cover with the gilt supralibros of the City of Canterbury. Covers slightly worn with some some losses through stripping, the contents very fresh.
First edition of the last Witchcraft Act, repealing the former acts of Elizabeth I and James I (and Mary of Scotland) against witchcraft, and declaring magic, witchcraft and sorcery fraudulent. The last person to be legally executed for witchcraft was the Scottish woman Janet Horne in 1727, but legal sentiment had by then absorbed Enlightenment thinking and rational explanation of all forms of magic. Punishment by death was replaced in the 1735 act by imprisonment of up to one year only, on the basis that witchcraft could no longer be considered a crime, merely a nuisance.
In this volume, formerly belonging to the council of the City of Canterbury (Kent), it is interesting to find an old (perhaps early nineteenth-century) paper scrap marking the Witchcraft Act among the many other acts contained in the volume, together with a marginal pencil marking beside the shoulder note ‘Persons pretending to exercise Witchcraft, tell Fortunes, or by crafty Science to discover stolen Goods’.