The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal

by James Franklin

Some thousand witches were executed in England in the course of the next century, a much smaller figure than for Germany, France, or Scotland. Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft of 1584 attacked the credulity of the Malleus and Bodin, including their reliance on presumptions and suspicions to an extent not acceptable with other crimes.66 Scot was answered by King James VI of Scotland in his Demonologie, a book based on the king’s own interrogation of witches who confessed to trying to kill him. James thinks the accused against whom there is only moderate evidence will all be eventually found guilty of at least something, “so jealous is God, I say, of the fame of those that are innocent in such causes.”