A council leader in Maidstone, Kent, is urging the UK government to pardon women executed for witchcraft centuries ago, arguing their deaths were rooted in bigotry rather than sorcery. Stuart Jeffery, head of Maidstone Borough Council, has written to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, calling for legislation to clear the names of hundreds of women who were put to death under the 1562 Witchcraft Act—including seven local women hanged at Penenden Heath in 1652.
Jeffery says the women were targeted not for casting spells but for being "poor, single, widowed, or healers. ... They weren't witches. They were women who had no one to speak for them," he says. "Their persecution was rooted in misogyny, not magic." CNN in 2024 reported England's government figures indicate it executed at least 500 so-called witches between 1542 and 1735, but historian believe the true count could be double. Jeffery sees some precedent for the move he's advocating for, pointing to Turing's Law, which in 2013 posthumously pardoned people convicted of homosexual acts.
The Telegraph reports the UK government fielded a similar ask in 2024, and while it "acknowledge[d] the historic miscarriages of justice" that occurred between the 16th and 18th centuries, it said in March of that year that "there are no current plans to legislate to pardon those who were convicted of these crimes during this period." The BBC reports the Scottish government in 2022 issued a formal apology to those who had been accused of witchcraft over that same period—CNN reports Scotland put an estimated 2,500 "witches" to death—but stopped short of actually pardoning them.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
